Everyone to his taste.  If you want Tommy’s sentiments, here they are, condensed:  “The shows surpass everything else on earth.  Four streets of them in the square!  The best is the menagerie, because there is the loudest roaring there.  Kick the caravans and you increase the roaring.  Admission, however, prohibitive (threepence).  More economical to stand outside the show of the ‘Mountain Maid and the Shepherd’s Bride’ and watch the merriman saying funny things to the monkey.  Take care you don’t get in front of the steps, else you will be pressed up by those behind and have to pay before you have decided that you want to go in.  When you fling pennies at the Mountain Maid and the Shepherd’s Bride they stop play-acting and scramble for them.  Go in at night when there are drunk ploughmen to fling pennies.  The Fat Wife with the Golden Locks lets you put your fingers in her arms, but that is soon over.  ’The Slave-driver and his Victims.’  Not worth the money; they are not blooding.  To Jerusalem and Back in a Jiffy.  This is a swindle.  You just keek through holes.”

But Elspeth was of a different mind.  She liked To Jerusalem and Back best, and gave the Slave-driver and his Victims a penny to be Christians.  The only show she disliked was the wax-work, where was performed the “Tragedy of Tiffano and the Haughty Princess.”  Tiffano loved the woodman’s daughter, and so he would not have the Haughty Princess, and so she got a magician to turn him into a pumpkin, and then she ate him.  What distressed Elspeth was that Tiffano could never get to heaven now, and all the consolation Tommy, doing his best, could give her was, “He could go, no doubt he could go, but he would have to take the Haughty Princess wi’ him, and he would be sweer to do that.”

Grizel reflected:  “If I had a whip like the one the Slave-driver has shouldn’t I lash the boys who hoot my mamma!  I wish I could turn boys into pumpkins.  The Mountain Maid wore a beautiful muslin with gold lace, but she does not wash her neck.”

Lastly, let Corp have his say:  “I looked at the outside of the shows, but always landed back at Californy’s stand.  Sucking is better nor near anything.  The Teuch and Tasty is stickier than ever.  I have lost twa teeth.  The Mountain Maid is biding all night at Tibbie Birse’s, and I went in to see her.  She had a bervie and a boiled egg to her tea.  She likes her eggs saft wi’ a lick of butter in them.  The Fat Wife is the one I like best.  She’s biding wi’ Shilpit Kaytherine on the Tanage Brae.  She weighs Jeems and Kaytherine and the sma’ black swine.  She had an ingin to her tea.  The Slave-driver’s a fushinless body.  One o’ the Victims gives him his licks.  They a’ bide in the caravan.  You can stand on the wheel and keek in.  They had herrings wi’ the rans to their tea.  I cut a hole in Jerusalem and Back, and there was no Jerusalem there.  The man as ocht Jerusalem greets because the Fair Circassian winna take him.  He is biding a’ night wi’ Blinder.  He likes a dram in his tea.”