boots, wherewith to trample upon their unoffending neighbors?  Are they not as prone to bad language as the Tribune, and as noisy and noisome as the Sun itself?  In short, are they not always and altogether the most oppressive nuisance that can annoy the peaceful pleasure-seeker?  Echo answers that there isn’t the smallest possible doubt of it.  Why, then, do we foolishly speak of innocent boyhood?

Girls, on the other hand, may be innocent,—­that is to say, when they are extremely young.  Of course they outgrow it when they arrive at years of flirtation; but up to—­say—­their tenth or eleventh year, they rarely go in for muddy boots and inappropriate peanuts,—­at least not to the same extent as boys.  The average little girl is, moreover, seldom found at the CIRCUS.  She prefers WALLACK’S, or BOOTH’S theatre,—­whereas your usual boy despises the legitimate drama, and prefers to have his dissipations served up with a great deal of horse and plentifully spiced with the presence of the cheerful clown.  For my part, I frankly confess that I do not like boys, and heartily approve of the noble sentiment expressed the other day by my landlady, who, on reading that the Parisians had destroyed the Bois de Boulogne, remarked that, “Even if the French couldn’t spell ‘boys’ properly, she was glad to see that they knew how to treat them.”  Pardon the errors of her pronunciation.  She learned French at a young ladies’ seminary.

But I digress.  It is a reprehensible habit.  It is much better, as a rule, to die game than it is to digress, though on the present occasion there is no reason why I should do either.  By the way, if a man has to choose between having either his leg or his arm amputated, which ought he to choose?  Obviously he should choose ether,—­that being much safer than chloroform.

As I was saying, the CIRCUS always has a strong flavor of orange peel.  Will some one explain why orange-peel has such a close affinity for horses and sawdust?  I have attempted to account for it by an elaborate stretching of the theory of chemical affinities.  People crack peanuts at the CIRCUS, because the cracking of peanuts in its prosaic dreariness is in harmony with the cracking of jokes by the dreary clown.  The clown himself is always hoarse, obviously because of his intimate association with the feats of horsemanship.  Here are two cases in which the theory of affinities clearly applies.  Now, can we not go further, and find some connection between the ring of the Circus and the peel of the orange?  Or again, may not the presence of unwholesome animals in the arena have something to do with the presence of orange-rind in the seats?  The latter is clearly a rind-pest of the very worst variety.

At this rate we shall never get inside the Circus building.  So say MARGARET; and I therefore cease my philosophical remarks, which have so strongly impressed the doorkeeper that he has finally beckoned to a policeman to come and listen to them.  Up the steep stairs we hasten, and are put into a reserved pen, where we watch the glory of motley and the glitter of spangles in the ring below.