SEMI. MONTHLY MAGAZINE
5
ARTO
1 1 1 HNT I IV C K 1, 13 H K If Y FINN
wi'iit td the circus, liu sneaked in
under tlie lent when t lie watchman
was absent. He had money in his
pocket, but lie feared that he might
have other expenses to meet. "1
ain't opposed to spending money on circuses," lie
confessed, "when (here ain't no oilier way, but there
ain't no use in wastinij it on them."
In spite of the fact that he had not paid for his
seat and that he was thereby released from the ne
cessity of getting his money's worth, be declared
cheerfully that "it was a real bully circus. It was the
splendide.st sight that ever was, when they all come
ridinjr in, two ami two, a gentleman and a lady, side
by side, the men just in their drawers and under
shirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their
hands on their thighs, easy and comfortable . . .
and every lady with a lovely complexion, and per
fectly beautiful, and looking like a gang of real sure
enough queens. . . . And then, one by one, they
got up and stood, and went a-weaving around the
ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men look
ing ever so tall and airy and straight, with their
heads bobbing and skimming along, away up there
under the tent-roof, and every lady's rose-leaf dress
Happing soft and silky around her hips, and she
looking like the most loveliest parasol."
.My the side of this passage from the Twain mas
terpiece may be set a passage from Mr. llainlin
(Sarland's best story, Hose of Dutcber's Coolly, in
which we Ibid recorded the impressions of a girl of
about the same age, the daughter of a hard-working
Wisconsin farmer. Hose had never seen a circus
before; and even the morning street-parade llred her
i5K
imagination, and gave her a new idea of beauty.
"On they came, a band leading the way. .lust be
hind, with glitter of lance and shine of helmet, came
a dozen knights and fair ladies riding spirited
chargers. . . . The women seemed small and
tirm and scornful, and the men rode with lances up
lifted looking down at the crowd with a haughty
droop in their eyelids." Hose "did not laugh at the
clown jigging by in a pony-cart, for there was a face
between her and all that followed the face of a
bare-armed knight, with brown hair ami a curling
mustache, whose proud neck had a curve in it as he
bent his head to speak to his rearing horse. . . .
His face was tine, like pictures she had seen."
In the afternoon, Hose attended the performance
in the lent and "sal in a dream of delight as the baud
began to play. . . . Then the music struck into
a splendid gallop and out from the curtained mys
teries beyond, the knights and ladies darted, two by
two, in glory of crimson and gold, and green and
silver. At their head rode the man with the brown
mustache." A little later "six men dressed in tights
of blue and while and orange ran into the ring and
her hero led them, lie wore blue and silver, ami on
his breast was a rosette. Ho looked a god to her.
His naked limbs, his proud neck, the lofty carriage of
his head, made her shiver with emotion. They all
came to her, lit by the while radiance; they were not
naked, they were beautiful. . . . They invested
their nakedness with something which exalted them.
They became objects of luminous beauty to her,
though she knew nothing of art. To see him bow
and kiss his lingers to the audience was a revelation
of manly grace ami courtesy." When at last the
show was over ami Hose went out into the open air
"it seemed strange lo see the same blue sky arching
the earth; things seemed exactly tbo same, and yet
Hose had grown older. She had developed immeas
urably in those few hours."
SHI' never saw this acrobat again, and after a
little while, she knew that she did not want to
see him. lie, lingered in her memory, a vision from
another world than any she had ever dreamed a
world of heroic romance and of lofty idealism. "She
began to live, for him, her ideal." And while her
soul was expanding under the iiilluence of her poetic
idealization of a manly figure revealed to her only
for two or three hours, all unconsciously she pat
terned her movements upon his. She walked with a
free stride and her body came to have the easy car
riage of the athlete. Later, when Hose had ma
lured into a beauty of her own, she confessed to an
elder woman this sentimental awakening in her early
girlhood; and it became evident to her friend that
"the beautiful poise of lite bead and supple swing of
tbo girl's body was in part due lo the suggestion of
the man's perfect grace."
To the realistic imagination of the boy, llnck, the
circus was a fleeting spectacle of beauty; anil to the
romantic imagination of the girl, Hose, it lingered
long as a dream of poetry. Young Americans, both
of them, living in these modern days when the human
form, male and female, is decorously dissembled and
disguised by ugly and complicated garments, they
had been allowed by the exceptional freedom of the
circus to recapture something of the frank and inno
cent delight of the (S reeks in the beauty of the body,
in its beauty merely as a body, ami not as the habi
tation of the mind and the soul.
ALKHT as the ( reeks were to admire the deeds
of t ho mind--no race ever more so t lu'y
were no less keen in (heir appreciation of the things
of the body. They were glad to crown the poet for
his lyric coiiiiest, but they bestowed the laurel
wreath also on the athlete who had won to the front
in the race. The lofty nobility of their tragedy tesli
lies lo the clarity of their intelligence; ami the su
preme power of their sculpture is cidenco of their
loving study of the human body, bearing itself in
beauty, clad in few ami (lowing garments which al
lowed the eye to follow the free play of the muscles.
It is because I he circus preserves for us this occa
sional privilege that it deserves to survive. The
jocularities of the clowns, Hie intricate- evolutions of
the I rained animals, the golden glitter of the gor
geous cavalcades; all these (('uiiliiiunl on I'ayc 10)
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