Page:Dapples of the Circus (1943).pdf/214

 the circus posters which informed them in glowing Spanish all about the big show. Nor were the children the only ones who gazed spellbound at the posters, for many of the South Americans of mixed blood are little more than children in the ways of the world and its wonders. So it was a very easily pleased audience before which the circus played. The only thing that they had ever witnessed that approached the circus in any degree was the Spanish bull-fight.

A lot of the circus people went to a bull-fight one Sunday, when the president and some of the other high Brazilian officials were present.

Now the circus people as a class are very devoted animal-lovers, and they denounced the bull-fight among themselves as a bloody spectacle belonging more to the dark ages than to the present enlightened century. One bull-fight was enough for most of them, so they rarely patronized the Sunday shows after that first day.