Travelers Five Along Life's Highway

THE little man in motley, thrusting his face through the curtains of the / big circus tent, looked out on the gathering crowds and grinned. To him / that assemblage of gaping backwoods pioneers was a greater show than the / one he was travelling with, although the circus itself was a pioneer in / its way. It was the first that had ever travelled through the almost / unbroken forests of southern Indiana, and the fame of its performance at / Vincennes had spread to the Ohio long before the plodding oxen had drawn / the heavy lion cages half that distance. Such wild rumours of it had / found their way across the sparsely settled hills and hollows, that / families who had not been out of sight of their cabin chimneys in five / years or more were drawn irresistibly circusward.

Standing on a barrel, behind a hole in the canvas of the tent, the / little clown amused himself by watching the stream of arrivals. As far / as he could see, down the glaringly sunny road, rising clouds of dust / betokened the approach of a seemingly endless procession. The whole / county appeared to be flocking to the commons just outside of Burnville, / where the annual training in military tactics took place on "muster / days." People were coming by the wagon-load; nearly every horse carried / double, and one old nag ambled up with a row of boys astride her patient / back from neck to tail.