The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-07-26
CIRCUS DAY,

stuOleS put with the professor.
CIRCUS DAY.
Breathes there q man with soul 81
dead, who never to himself hath said
that-was my first, my earliest circus!
What enhancing, bewitchlng memories
Irvine around that great event of youth
full lives! To most of us, time in its
course has brought some signal days OF
triumph and rejoicing, days hat we
mark with a white stone and that we
treasure in the temple of our thoughts
The occasion of our first sermon it may
have been, or our first scholarship, or
our first public speech. 1t may have
been that glorious day when first we
passed the rubicon in the life of the
male OF the human species, the day of
proud emancipation when we flung from
us the trammels and the indignities or
the p%etticoat, detied forever the author
ity of the nursemaid and, IN our first
pair OF pants, stood forth all blushing
before the gaze of the world-a man. 1t
may have been the first cigar, smoked
beneath the kindly shades of night or in
the melodramatic secrecy of the family
cellar. Hard to efface are the memories
of that pioneer of cigars and It's here
after. How every pore within the
mouth became an artesian we'll that
spouted it's millions of gallons per min
ute, and how little interest for ours and
hours life seemed to possess. 1t may
have been our first dress suit, our first
sweetheart. That Is, if we remember
who she was, for 1t is wonderful how
thoroughly the doctrine of transmigra-
ton Of souls per1neates this department
Of human activity. Last there is none.
The thousandth is still the first. 1t NAV
have been our first successful story, our
first accepted poem, our first vote, our
first entrance into congress, our first
charge of being in contempt of court, or
the advent of our first born. Any or all
of these red letter times in the life Of
man it may have been, but they are
pale and fade away-like the stars when
the sun god comes-before the recollec-
tions Of u first circus.
Even as we write the aromatic per-
fume of the sawdust steals upon our
n~ostrils, and from the elevated height of
some triumphal chariot our senses are
thrilled by the music of the spheres.
and the bellowings and the mutterings
of the awful wild beasts! They have
no such wild beasts now, so gigantic, so
dangerous. The race is extinct. And
when we had once heard the crash of
the brass band, our taste was cloyed.
We may have heard ike Marine band at
Washington receptions, and listened to
Wagnerian jewellers at B%ayreuth, but the
circus band of our memory is unique.
Will it ever again be our fate to look
upon such bewitching ladies as paraded
the streets that day, such cavaliers,
who seemed to have stepped from
the field of the cloth or gold.
such sleek, glossy, housekeeping steeds?
TO u tender intellects, nurtured on
the diluted milk of tonic dissyllables,
what marvellous developments of erudi-
ton, what prodigies of scholarship
seemed these circus posters with their
astounding galaxies Of terrestrial con
stellatlons, their cosmopolitan aggrega-
tions, and other ~polysyllabled explos-
ives! We were ready to believe that, in
the privacy of family life, the circus
man. asking for more milk, desiderated
an additional supply of tactical fluid: In
later days we have quatfed the growth
Of nornrnI1c al IN 1.r,, ,,D la-a .,-..
prosy over port with its mystic bees
wing; we have approached with some
thing like reverence a breath of lachryma
christi, and we have swilled of the beer
that is good for the son of man when the
sun of heaven shineth. But no arts of
the deftest bartender with the biggest
OF solitaires can eclipse in our memories
the first deep, deep draught of circus
lemonade. 1t was a poem, a dream.
This is an age of iconoclasm. Honest
men, men who have the reputation of
Christian gentlemen, have assured us
that the circus lemonade of to-day is an
inferior decoction, that the lemon shines
only iitfully on Its surface, as the sun
beams struggle through the rain-clouds.
1t may be Sc. Time brings ~decadence.
Oleomargarine is sold for honest butter
and Benjamin Harrison reigns in the
room of Washington. O tempora, @
mores. But when these same honest
men, with an irritating smile of superior
knowledge, venture to insinuate that
perhaps our memory is in fault, that
perhaps time has lent to reality a veil of
romance, that in brief circus lemonade
is the same yesterday, to-day and for
ever, u soul ID up in arms. While life
remains, no lconoclast shall lay sacri-
leglous hands upon the palladium of our
circus liberties, and that palladium is
lemonade. Lemonade, the nectar of
the gods, divine, sweet as the first kiss
OF calf-love. How excruclatingly funny
were the clowns, how agile the acrobats.
how intelligent the mules! The highest
prizes of life in any other honorable ca
reer sank into absolute nothingness,
when compared with the honor and the
glory and the pride of belonging to a
circus. 70 be permitted to
it's parade through the streets was itself
a privilege that might beseem a presi-
dent or an emperor. Great is the Amer
lean circus! Great is Young America