I pay my quarter of a dollar and go into all the side-shows that follow the caravans and circuses round the country.  I have made friends of all the giants and all the dwarfs.  I became acquainted with Monsieur Bihin, le plus bel homme du monde, and one of the biggest, a great many years ago, and have kept up my agreeable relations with him ever since.  He is a most interesting giant, with a softness of voice and tenderness of feeling which I find very engaging.  I was on friendly terms with Mr. Charles Freeman, a very superior giant of American birth, seven feet four, I think, in height, “double-jointed,” of mylodon muscularity, the same who in a British prize-ring tossed the Tipton Slasher from one side of the rope to the other, and now lies stretched, poor fellow! in a mighty grave in the same soil which holds the sacred ashes of Cribb, and the honored dust of Burke,—­not the one “commonly called the sublime,” but that other Burke to whom Nature had denied the sense of hearing lest he should be spoiled by listening to the praises of the admiring circles which looked on his dear-bought triumphs.  Nor have I despised those little ones whom that devout worshipper of Nature in her exceptional forms, the distinguished Barnum, has introduced to the notice of mankind.  The General touches his chapeau to me, and the Commodore gives me a sailor’s greeting.  I have had confidential interviews with the double-headed daughter of Africa,—­so far, at least, as her twofold personality admitted of private confidences.  I have listened to the touching experiences of the Bearded Lady, whose rough cheeks belie her susceptible heart.  Miss Jane Campbell has allowed me to question her on the delicate subject of avoirdupois equivalents; and the armless fair one, whose embrace no monarch could hope to win, has wrought me a watch-paper with those despised digits which have been degraded from gloves to boots in our evolution from the condition of quadrumana.

I hope you have read my experiences as good-naturedly as the old Master listened to them.  He seemed to be pleased with my whim, and promised to go with me to see all the side-shows of the next caravan.  Before I left him he wrote my name in a copy of the new edition of his book, telling me that it would not all be new to me by a great deal, for he often talked what he had printed to make up for having printed a good deal of what he had talked.

Here is the passage of his Poem the Young Astronomer read to us.

          Wind-clouds and star-drifts.

IV

     From my lone turret as I look around
     O’er the green meadows to the ring of blue,
     From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale
     The sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires,
     Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind,
     Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world,
     Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware;