This seemed quite exciting at the start, but it finally grew monotonous, and the boyish longing for travel and adventure came back to me with redoubled force. As my mother had died when I was very young, and father had married again, surrounding himself with a second family, my home ties, though pleasant enough, were not what they might have been had my own mother lived. The printer in the little newspaper office who was dignified by the title of foreman had seemed to take quite a fancy to me, and we became rather close companions. One day when the spirit of restlessness and adventure was strong upon me I confided to him that I was tired of our slow old town and suggested that we pack our few belongings in bundles and start out for some place which would offer us a bigger chance to get on. This proposal, with the beautiful summer weather, started the slumbering tendency to wander that lurks in the heart of every true printer. Placing a few necessaries in two bundles, we quietly left the village in regulation tramp-printer style. At length we reached Terre Haute, where I was offered employment in a newspaper office. I realized that I knew very little of the printing craft, and that it would take many years of hard, up-hill work to make me a master of the art. Consequently I determined to find some other line of employment more exciting than that of "sticking type." The first thing we heard was that a circus was showing in the town. This caught my fancy, and I told my companion that I was going to join the circus and see something of the world. He was disgusted at this proposal, and very plainly warned me that if I took such a course I would make a worthless loafer of myself. But my circus blood was up, and I put my resolve into immediate action, little dreaming that I was taking the first step in a career that was to become a part of the history of the show business in America. The show which I joined was one of the largest then in existence, having more than a hundred horses, ten fine Ceylon elephants, a gorgeously carved and painted "Car of Juggernaut," and many other "attractions" which seemed marvelous in my boyish eyes. Not the least of these in point of attractiveness and popularity was General "Tom" Thumb, who was petted and feasted wherever he went. But Nellis, the man without arms who could paint pictures and shoot pennies from the fingers of the manager, claimed a large share of my silent admiration. MY FIRST EXCITING EXPERIENCE