Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/42

34 What, indeed! it is an embarras de richesses.

"The circus," says Alice.

"The fat woman," says Milly, who has been much struck.

"The peep-show," says Jack.

"Anywhere out of the sun," say I; so Jack, being the only male present gets his own way, and we are speedily lifting the dirty red curtain, and standing on forms arranged in a circle, beholding improving illustrations of battle, murder, and sudden death.

The first scene represents a field, strewn with dead bodies, whose heads, arms, and legs, are scattered around them in graceful confusion; a few horses seem to have got into the mélée by mistake, and lie on their backs with all four legs turned up piteously to the gory sky, as who should say, "We kicked to the last!"

The beauties of this affecting picture are forcibly pointed out to us by the showman, who describes it as being the scene of a "most 'orrible massacree," as depicted by a "hi witness."

We are next treated to an artistic study of murder in low life, the murderer being in hot pursuit of a young female in a nightgown, whose hair sets out straight as porcupine's quills from her head, and within an inch of the itching fingers of her pursuer, while behind him are laid out in an ascending scale the dead bodies of an old man, an old woman, and a child, the same being the victims he has just finished off.

In the midst of the showman's description of this tableau vivant, his voice suddenly ceases; turning to ascertain the cause of his silence, we find that he has temporarily retired behind a pot of beer, "Not before it was required," as he remarks when he returns to his duties. It strikes us that before the day is over, his explanations will be somewhat hazy and obscure. And we see several other horrors which Amberley regards with extreme disfavour, as being possibly subversive of our morals.

When this stock of delicacies is exhausted, we adjourn to the