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An essay by Robert Cortes Holliday |
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A Three-Ringed Circus |
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Title: A Three-Ringed Circus Author: Robert Cortes Holliday [More Titles by Holliday] Our friend MacKeene is a very interesting person. One of his most pronounced characteristics is an assiduous striving on his part to increase his vocabulary. We are always made aware of any of his new acquisitions in this direction by its frequent repetition during a conversation, the loving way in which he appears to dwell upon it, to hug it to his heart, allow it gradually to mount to his throat, roll it in his mouth to suck its flavor, to send it forth at length, to watch it tenderly and admiringly (like a fine ring of tobacco smoke) until it loses itself in the flow of speech that comes after it. We relish this new word ourselves. It is like a play; it thrills our soul, and we sigh when it is gone--but we know it will come again many times before the night is passed. It has never been our fortune to see a man that enjoyed the show of life more than does MacKeene. He reads newspapers with a relish that is positively amazing; he smacks his lips over them; their contents are to him the headiest romance. MacKeene goes to the finest theater in the world every evening when he reads his penny paper. The anxiety with which he awaits the account of each new murder, swindle, election, disaster, marriage, or divorce of a special publicity, the mental agility with which he pounces upon it, the astonishing variety of points of view he can take of the thing, and the application with which he follows through successive installments the story to the very end, are delightful to behold. He invariably winds up his observations upon life with the comment that "it is a funny world; such funny people in it." True, or, rare MacKeene! It is a funny world, and there are such funny people in it! Everybody is queer but thee and us. The other evening, after he had devoured his newspaper and sat staring at the wall, we started him going by the remark: "Well, what's in the paper to-night, MacKeene?" "What's in the paper to-night?" cried he. "Everything is in the paper, everything--worlds of it--plays, skits, comedies, farces, tragedies, burlesques: material for the student, the historian, the author, the poet, the moralist, the humorist, much matter to be fast applauded for its slapstick good nature, and some bowed with leaden-eyed despair, some replete with rosy schemes, some of waxing hopes and sweet, unprofitable pipe dreams, some of many moneys, births, deaths, marriages and giving in marriages, loves, hatreds, wisdoms, follies, crimes, vices and virtues, heroisms, hypocrisies, arts, commercialism, surprises, bacchanals, hard exigencies, and poor resorts and petty contrivances. Life--ah! that's the boy--life and all its train of consequences, ringing in my ears, dancing before my eyes, crowding on the senses, a three-ringed circus in full blast, a roary, noisy, bloomin' spectacle, a mammoth aggregation of prodigious eye-openers and unparalleled splendors, with gorgeous hippodrome under perfect subjection, and a Casino Wonderland Musée of queer, peculiar, wild, domestic, instructing, funny, beautiful, horrible, and revolting curios and monstrosities of land, air, and sea." [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |