There is more fact than poetry in these lines. The spring brings gaily colored posters, like flowers of many hues, to decorate the dead walls and fences; and litters the streets with small hand-bills in which the wonders of the evening show are dwelt upon in a style of rhetoric that would make George Francis Train sick. The name of the show is too long to print in this book, even if I began at the title-page and wrote small and close through every page down to the lower right-hand corner of the back cover. Since they got to consolidating shows, they have by some elastic process begun to lengthen out the name, and at every reappearance of a circus in a town the bill-poster must add a few yards to the length of his fence to get the improved and newly elongated name on it, and to make a few square yards of additional space for the fresh stock of impossible pictures the artist has chopped out for the show. I like to regard the ridiculous art and the brazen exaggeration of these posters. What consummate impertinence prompts the managers of these concerns to put a circus on paper that could never have an existence under the sun is something that it is impossible to understand. They ask and they must have the patronage of the public they insult by spreading such absurdities upon the wall as the picture of one horse lying on his back with his legs up and another horse standing above him, their eight hoofs meeting; or of a man being blown from the mouth of a cannon, or indeed any of the other ridiculous and gaudy illustrations which are designed to catch the eye at a distance of one hundred yards and to hold the attention long enough to make the investigator of bill-board literature part with a half dollar. But it seems that circus managers and circus agents have no other idea of advertising than to make the ink and the colors on their posters say as much as the imagination can suggest, and to make people pay for the privilege of finding out that they have been bamboozled. It seems to be remunerative though, for a circus can create greater commotion in a town than a big fire, and from the moment it pitches its tents--a city of canvas, they usually call it--until the glory of the visit fades, thousands are interested in it and the opening of its doors always finds a throng with tickets in hand anxious to get inside as early as possible, to have a thorough look at the menagerie and in the other way, by putting in full time to get their money's worth out of the show.