We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN* 39
"Stumpie" in the morning and ask for a day off to see the circus. I was one of the committee. When the morning came I, for one, rued my appointment and the other two members of the deputation did the same. You see, we knew our "Stumpie" and we had all come to the conclusion that there wasn't a thousand to one chance of him listening favourably to the request. We trooped into school and the circus was never mentioned. But at the dinner hour we held another meeting and ten or a dozen of us decided to take the bull by the horns and play truant for the rest of the day.
We had a glorious time on the Common among the circus tents. When the evening performance came along I burrowed my way underneath the canvas and had a spell-binding view of the proceedings for about half an hour. Suddenly the spell was broken by an attendant gripping me by the nape of the neck, bending me over his knee and administering severe corporal punishment with a horse brush. Then he flung me towards the canvas and ordered me to clear out the way I had come in. No snake ever wriggled quicker through the jungle than I did below the flapping canvas. Sore but satisfied, I was a hero among the other chaps for days after the circus had departed. This it did on a Sunday evening. We boys followed the cavalcade as it wound its way out of town to the north. The wooden sides of a van containing several lions were still down and naturally this was the vehicle which focussed our fascinated attention. Once, out of bravado, I dashed up close to the side of the "cage" and yelled fearsomely at the lions. One of these snarled at me and stuck an angry paw through the bars. I received such a fright that I fell, and in falling I spiked my hand against a projecting bit of iron on the wheel-rim of the next caravan. The mark is there to this day.
The sequel to our playing truant is worth telling. We had to work in the mill the following day, but next morning "Stumpie" was waiting for us in a condition of bottled-up