Weeks before the date of the great event, the barns and sheds and every available wall in the little village, to which the boy often went with his father, would be covered with gorgeous pictures announcing the many startling, stupendous, wonders, to be seen for so small a price. There was a hippopotamus of such size that a boat load of twenty naked savages was not for him a mouthful. There were elephants so huge that the house where the boy lived was but a play house beside them. There were troops of aerial artists, who, on wires and rings and trapeze and ladders and ropes, did daring, dreadful, death defying, deeds, that no simian in his old world forest would ever think of attempting. There was a great, glittering, gorgeous, procession, of such length that the farther end was lost beyond the distant horizon and tents that covered more acres of ground than the boy could see from the top of the orchard hill. Wonderful promises of the billboards! Wonderful! Wonderful promises of the billboards of Life! Wonderful! Then would follow the days of waiting--the endless days of waiting--when the boy, with the help of the little girl, would try to be everything that the billboards pictured, from the roaring lion in his cage to the painted clown who cut such side splitting capers and the human fly that, with her gay Japanese parasol, walked upside down upon a polished ceiling. When circus day was coming, the fairies and knights and princes and soldiers and all their tried and true companions were forced to go somewhere--anywhere--out of the boy's way. There was no time, in those busy days, even for fishing. The old mill pond had no charm that was not exceeded by the promises of the billboards. The earth itself, indeed, was merely a place upon which to pitch a circus tent. The charms of the little girl, even, were almost totally eclipsed by the captivating loveliness of those ladies who, in spangled tights of blue and pink and red, hung by their teeth at dizzy heights, bestrode glittering wheels upon slack wires, or were shot from cannon to soar, amid black smoke and lurid flame, like angels, far above the heads of the common people.