disturb the school-house long after midnight? to arouse that sleeping
lion, the usher, in the very midst of his night's rest? The idea was
too dreadful for a delinquent school-boy. All the horrors of return
rushed upon me--my absence must long before this have been
remarked--and absent for a whole night? A deed of darkness not easily
to be expiated. The rod of the pedagogue budded forth into tenfold
terrors before my affrighted fancy. I pictured to myself punishment and
humiliation in every variety of form; and my heart sickened at the
picture. Alas! how often are the petty ills of boyhood as painful to
our tender natures, as are the sterner evils of manhood to our robuster
minds.

I wandered about among the booths, and I might have derived a lesson
from my actual feelings, how much the charms of this world depend upon
ourselves; for I no longer saw anything gay or delightful in the
revelry around me. At length I lay down, wearied and perplexed, behind
one of the large tents, and covering myself with the margin of the tent
cloth to keep off the night chill, I soon fell fast asleep.

I had not slept long, when I was awakened by the noise of merriment
within an adjoining booth. It was the itinerant theatre, rudely
constructed of boards and canvas. I peeped through an aperture, and saw
the whole dramatis personae, tragedy, comedy, pantomime, all refreshing
themselves after the final dismissal of their auditors. They were merry
and gamesome, and made their flimsy theatre ring with laughter. I was
astonished to see the tragedy tyrant in red baize and fierce whiskers,
who had made my heart quake as he strutted about the boards, now
transformed into a fat, good humored fellow; the beaming porringer laid
aside from his brow, and his jolly face washed from all the terrors of
burnt cork. I was delighted, too, to see the distressed damsel in faded