“Oh, don't tell me,” said Uncle Ike, as he ran a broom straw into his pipe stem to open up the pores; “I was brought up among circuses, and used to sit up all night and go out on the road to meet the old wagon show coming to town. Did you ever go away out five or six miles, in the night, to meet a circus, and get tired, and lay down by the road and go to sleep, and have the dew on the grass wet your bare feet and trousers clear up to your waistband, and suddenly have the other boys wake you up, and there was a fog so you couldn't see far, and suddenly about daylight you hear a noise like a hog that gets frightened and says 'Woof!' and there coming out of the fog right on to you is the elephant, looking larger than a house, and you keep still for fear of scaring him, and he passes on and then the camels come, and the cages, and the sleepy drivers letting the six horses go as they please, and the wagons with the tents, and the performers sleeping on the bundles, and the band wagon with all the musicians asleep, and the lions and tigers don't say anything; and you never do anything except keep your eyes bulging out till they get by, and then you realize you are six miles from home, and you follow the procession into town, and when you get home your parents take you across a chair and pet you with a press board for being out all night, until you are so blistered that you cannot sit down on a seat at the circus in the afternoon. Oh, I have been there, boy, barefooted and bareheaded, with a hickory shirt on open clear down, and torn trousers opened clear up. Lemonade never tastes like it does at a circus, sawdust never smells the same anywhere else, and nothing in the whole world smells like a circus,” and the old man's face lighted up as though the recollection had made him young again. “Did you ever see a fight at a circus, Uncle Ike?” asked the red-headed boy, who seemed to have been more impressed with the fight he had seen than with the performance. “See a circus fight?” said Uncle Ike. “Gosh, I was right in the midst of a circus fight, where several people were killed, and the whole town was a hospital for a month. See that scar on top of my head,” and the old man pointed with pride to a place on his head that looked as though a mule had kicked him. “I was a deputy constable the day Levi J. North's old circus, menagerie and troupe of Indians showed in the old town where I lived.” [Ilustration: I grabbed a circus man by the arm 047]