At length, as I caught an overhanging willow to rest her arms a moment, I felt bold enough to venture words about this assumption of amity which was so becoming in her. I even confessed that she was reminding me of certain distinguished but truly amiable personages who are commonly to be found in the side-show adjacent to the main tent. "Particularly of the wild man," I said, to be more specific, for my listener seemed at once to crave details. "There is a powerfully painted banner swelling in the breeze outside, you know. It shows the wild man in all his untamed ferocity, in his native jungle, armed with a simple but rather promising club. A dozen intrepid tars from a British man-of-war--to be seen in the offing--are in the act of casting a net over him. It's an exciting picture, I assure you, Miss Lansdale. The net looks flimsy, and the wild person is not only enraged but very muscular--" "I fail to see," she interrupted, with a slight lapse into what I may call her first, or Lansdale, manner. "Of course you fail! You have to go inside to see," I explained kindly. "But it only costs a dime, which is little enough--the hired enthusiast, indeed, stationed just outside the entrance, reminds us over and over again that it is only 'the tenth part of a dollar,' and he sometimes adds that 'it will neither make nor break nor set a man up in business.' He is a flagrant optimist in small money matters, ever looking on the bright side." "Inside?" suggested my listener, with some impatience. I had regretted my beginning and had meant to shirk a finish if she would let me; but it seemed I must go on. "Well, inside there's a hand-organ going all the time, you know--" "The wild man?" she insisted, like a child looking ahead for the real meat of the story one is telling it. "I'm getting to him as fast as I consistently can. The wild man sits tamely in a cheap chair on a platform, with a row of his photographs spread charmingly at his feet. Of course you are certain at once that he is no longer wild. You know that a wild man whose spirit had not been utterly broken would never sit there and listen to that hand-organ eight hours every day except Sunday. The fluent and polished gentleman in charge--who has a dyed mustache--assures us that we have nothing to fear from this 'once ferocious monster of the tropic jungle, with his bestial craving for human flesh,' but that seems a mere matter of form, with the hand-organ going in our ears--" "Really," Miss Lansdale began--or tried to.