When Brown, the lawyer, was studying French and read his Telemaque aloud by his open office window in such a stentorian voice as to be heard over a third of the “camp,” and with never a Frenchman at hand to correct his pronunciation, which he manufactured to suit himself as he went along, it was a part of the Bella Union circus to hear “Yank” imitate him. When old Broche, the long, thin, bald-headed French baker, who never would learn one word of English, put on his swallow-tailed Sunday coat, which he had brought over from La Belle France, and lifted up those coat tails when he tripped over the mud-puddles as a lady would her skirts, it was a part of the Bella Union circus to see “Scotty” mimic him. When John S----, the Virginian, impressively and loudly swore that a Jack-rabbit he had killed that day leaped twenty-five feet in the air on being shot, and would then look around the room as if he longed to find somebody who dared dispute his assertion, while his elder brother, always at his elbow in supporting distance, also glared into the eyes of the company, as though he also longed to fight the somebody who should dare discredit “Brother John’s” “whopper,” it was a part of the circus to see the “boys” wink at each other when they had a chance. When one heard and saw so many of every other man’s peculiarities, oddities, and mannerisms, save his own, set off and illustrated while the man was absent, and knew also that his own, under like circumstances, had been or would be brought out on exhibition, it made him feel that it was somewhat dangerous to feel safe on the slim and slippery ice of self-satisfaction and self-conceit. People in great cities haven’t so much time to make their own fun and amusement, as did the residents of so many of those lazy, lounging, tumbling-down, ramshackle “camps” of the era of “1863” or thereabouts. People in the city have more of their fun manufactured for them at the theatres of high and low degree. Yet it was wonderful how in “camp” they managed to dig so many choice bits and specimens out of the vein of varied human nature which lay so near them. Whenever I visited “Jimtown” my old friend Dixon would take me into his private corner to tell me “the last” concerning a character who was working hard on an unabridged copy of Webster’s Dictionary in the endeavor to make amends for a woeful lack of grammatical knowledge, the result of a neglected education. “He’s running now on two words,” Dixon would say, “and these are ‘perseverance’ and ‘assiduity.’ We hear them forty times a day, for he lugs them in at every possible opportunity, and, indeed, at times when there is no opportunity. He came to business the other morning a little unwell, and alluded to his stomach as being ‘in a chaotic state.’ And, sir, he can spell the word ‘particularly’ with six i’s. How he does it I can’t tell; but he can.” CHAPTER XX. THE ROMANCE OF AH SAM AND HI SING.