walls of the circus, and who differentiated their impressions of Singapore
and Moscow mainly in terms of climate and alcohol, Ben Flint had observed
men and things and had recorded and analysed his experiences, so that,
meeting a more or less educated youth like myself--perhaps a rare bird
in the circus world--standing on the brink of life, thirsting for the
knowledge that is not supplied by lectures at the Universities, he must
have felt some kind of satisfaction in pouring out, for my benefit, the
full vintage of his wisdom.

I see him now, squat, clean-shaven, with merry blue eyes in a mug of a
face, sitting in a deck chair, on a scrap of ragged ground forming the
angle between the row of canvas stables and the great tent, a cob pipe in
his humorous mouth, a thick half litre glass of beer with a handle to it on
the earth beside him, and I hear his shrewd talk of far-away and
mysterious lands. His pretty French wife, who knows no English, charmingly
dishevelled, uncorseted, free, in a dubious _peignoir_ trimmed
with artificial lace--she who moulded in mirific tights, sea-green with
reflections of mother-of-pearl, like Venus Anadyomene, does the tight rope
act every afternoon and evening--sits a little way apart, busy with needle
and thread repairing a sorry handful of garments which to-night will be
tense with some portion of her shapely body. Between them sprawls on his
side Billy, the great brown pig whom Ben has trained to stand on his hind
legs, to jump through hoops, to die for his country....

"They don't applaud. They don't appreciate you, Billy," the clown would
say, choosing his time when applause was scant. "Show them what you think
of them."

And then Billy would deliberately turn round and, moving in a semicircle,
present his stern to the delighted audience....