with them, except it may be fuel and provisions.  Each has his special duty appointed.  After acting at night they retire to their tents to sleep, and the proper people take the circus-tent down, and start at once for the next place they are to appear at; the performers and their tent-men rise early in the morning, and start so as to reach the ground about eleven; they then rest and prepare, so as to be ready, after the people of the village have dined, to give their first performance; then they rest and refresh ready for their evening repetition.  Some companies used to make their own gas, but experience has proved that wax-lights are sweeter and cheaper in the long run, so gas making is nearly exploded.  After this second performance they retire to rest; the circus tent-men strike and pack the tent, then start off for the next place of exhibition, the actors and their tents following as before mentioned:  thus they go on throughout the year, bipeds and quadrupeds scarcely ever entering a house.

There are numbers of these circus companies in the States, of which the largest is the one to which Van Amburgh is attached, and which, the fat boy told me, is about three times the size of his own—­Van Amburgh taking always upwards of a dozen cages of his wild beasts.  The work, he says, is very hard, but the money comes in pretty freely, which I can readily believe, as the bump of Inquisitiveness grows here with a luxuriance unknown elsewhere, and is only exceeded by its sister bump of Acquisitiveness, which two organs constitute audience and actors.

I give you no account of scenery on the road for two reasons:  first, because there are no striking features to relieve the alternations of rude cultivation and ruder forest; and secondly, because in winter, Nature being despoiled of the life-giving lines of herbage and foliage, a sketch of dreariness would be all that truth could permit.  I will therefore beg you to consider the twenty-one hours past, and Louisville reached in safety, where hot tea and “trimmings”—­as the astute young Samivel hath it—­soon restored us from the fatigues of a snail-paced journey, over the most abominable road a man can imagine, although it is the mail route between the flourishing towns of Louisville and Nashville.  Should any ambitious spirit feel a burning desire to visit the Mammoth Cave, let me advise him to slake the said flame with the waters of Patience, and take for his motto—­“I bide my time.”  Snoring has been the order of the day in these parts for many years; but the kettle-screaming roads of the North have at last disturbed the Southern slumberers, and, like giants refreshed, they are now working vigorously at their own kettle, which will soon hiss all the way from Louisville to Nashville.  Till then, I say, Patience.—­One of our companions in the stage very kindly offered to take us to the club, which is newly formed here, and which, if not large, is very comfortable.  I mention this as one among the many instances which have occurred to me while travelling in this country, of the desire exhibited by the better classes to show civility and attention to any gentleman who they observe is a stranger among them.