At a circus which played all one winter in Florence I saw for the first time-outside of polite society—­the clown in evening dress, who now seems essential to all circuses of metropolitan pretensions, and whom I missed so gladly at my village circus.  He is nearly as futile as the lady clown, who is one of the saddest and strangest developments of New Womanhood.

Of the clowns who do not speak, I believe I like most the clown who catches a succession of peak-crowned soft hats on his head, when thrown across the ring by an accomplice.  This is a very pretty sight always, and at the Hippodrome in Paris I once saw a gifted creature take his stand high up on the benches among the audience and catch these hats on his head from a flight of a hundred feet through the air.  This made me proud of human nature, which is often so humiliating; and altogether I do not think that after a real country circus there are many better things in life than the Hippodrome.  It had a state, a dignity, a smoothness, a polish, which I should not know where to match, and when the superb coach drove into the ring to convey the lady performers to the scene of their events, there was a majesty in the effect which I doubt if courts have the power to rival.  Still, it should be remembered that I have never been at court, and speak from a knowledge of the Hippodrome only.

AT A DIME MUSEUM

“I see,” said my friend, “that you have been writing a good deal about the theatre during the past winter.  You have been attacking its high hats and its high prices, and its low morals; and I suppose that you think you have done good, as people call it.”

I.

This seemed like a challenge of some sort, and I prepared myself to take it up warily.  I said I should be very sorry to do good, as people called it; because such a line of action nearly always ended in spiritual pride for the doer and general demoralization for the doee.  Still, I said, a law had lately been passed in Ohio giving a man who found himself behind a high hat at the theatre a claim for damages against the manager; and if the passage of this law could be traced ever so faintly and indirectly to my teachings, I should not altogether grieve for the good I had done.  I added that if all the States should pass such a law, and other laws fixing a low price for a certain number of seats at the theatres, or obliging the managers to give one free performance every month, as the law does in Paris, and should then forbid indecent and immoral plays—­

“I see what you mean,” said my friend, a little impatiently.  “You mean sumptuary legislation.  But I have not come to talk to you upon that subject, for then you would probably want to do all the talking yourself.  I want to ask you if you have visited any of the cheaper amusements of this metropolis, or know anything of the really clever and charming things one may see there for a very little money.”