FIFTY YEARS OF A SHOWMAN'S LIFE 



time I had reached years of discretion or was 

 supposed to have done so I had so many other 

 things to think about that I had no time for cold 

 shivers at anything less than dread realities ; 

 mere presentiments were not good enough. 



But I have let my subject run away with me, 

 and have emulated Tristram Shandy himself in 

 discursiveness. All I had in my mind when I 

 started on this tack was to record the nocturnal 

 climax of this nerve-racking day with the rail- 

 way officials, and at the same time to show how 

 little reason there is to pin your faith to signs 

 and omens. As may be imagined, I was not in a 

 state of boisterous high spirits after that ever-to- 

 be-remembered experience at Bridgwater, when, 

 at nightfall, I betook myself to certain lodgings, 

 adjacent to the show yard, which a friend had 

 secured for me. On entering my bedchamber, 

 death literally stared me in the face, for the sole 

 adornment of its walls consisted of a most choice 

 and varied selection of " in memoriam " cards, 

 with the deepest of black borders and obituary 

 notices. My landlady's relatives appeared to 

 have had a wonderful capacity for dying, and those 

 whom they left an equally remarkable capacity 

 for accumulating and preserving the most lugu- 

 brious records of the fatal event. Here, if so 

 inclined, one could enjoy to the full all the signs 

 and symbols associated with a shuffling off of 

 this mortal coil. Disconsolate maidens wept 

 against sepulchral urns, overshadowed by either 

 weeping willows or cypresses, I don't know which. 

 Cherubims and seraphims hovered over family 

 vaults amid divers emblems of mortality. Ofttimes 



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