The side-shows and the other amusements seemed to have addressed themselves to the crowd with the same mistaken notion of its character and requirements; though I confess that I witnessed their neglect with regret, whether from a feeling that they were at least harmless, or an unconscious sympathy with any quite idle and unprofitable thing. Those rotary, legless horses, on which children love to ride in a perpetual sickening circle,--the type of all our effort,--were nearly always mounted; but those other whirligigs, or whatever the dreadful circles with their swinging seats are called, were often so empty that they must have been distressing, from their want of balance, to the muscles as well as the spirits of their proprietors. The society of monsters was also generally shunned, and a cow with five legs gave milk from the top of her back to an audience of not more than six persons. The public apathy had visibly wrought upon the temper of the gentleman who lectured upon this gifted animal, and he took inquiries in an ironical manner that contrasted disadvantageously with the philosophical serenity of the person who had a weighing-machine outside, and whom I saw sitting in the chair and weighing himself by the hour, with an expression of profound enjoyment. Perhaps a man of less bulk could not have entered so keenly into that simple pleasure.
There was a large tent on the grounds for dramatical entertainments, with six performances a day, into which I was lured by a profusion of high-colored posters, and some such announcement, as that the beautiful serio-comic danseuse and world-renowned cloggist, Mile. Brown, would appear. About a dozen people were assembled within, and we waited a half-hour beyond the time announced for the curtain to rise, during which the spectacle of a young man in black broadcloth, eating a cocoa-nut with his pen-knife, had a strange and painful fascination. At the end of this half-hour, our number was increased to eighteen, when the orchestra appeared,--a snare-drummer and two buglers. These took their place at the back of the tent; the buglers, who were Germans, blew seriously and industriously at their horns; but the native-born citizen, who played the drum, beat it very much at random, and in the mean time smoked a cigar, while his humorous friend kept time upon his shoulders by striking him there with a cane. How long this might have lasted, I cannot tell; but, after another delay, I suddenly bethought me whether it were not better not to see Mile. Brown, after all? I rose, and stole softly out behind the rhythmic back of the drummer; and the world-renowned cloggist is to me at this moment only a beautiful dream,--an airy shape fashioned upon a hint supplied by the engraver of the posters.