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Not more than five winters ago we had a storm-stayed show on a small scale; but nowadays the farmers are less willing to give these wanderers a camping-place, and the people are less easily drawn to the entertainments provided, by fife and drum. The colony hung together until it was starved out, when it trailed itself elsewhere. I have often seen it forming.
"Well," said the old showman, in the midst of my meditations, "here is an honest company of us, one, two, three, four, five, six, all going to the camp-meeting at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I should like to know where this young gentleman may be going?" I started. How came I among these wanderers?
And so at length the dream in which I had so long indulged was realised. Once more I trod my native shores. Once more I had visited the home of my childhood. What a blank I had found! My lot has been that of thousands of seamen of thousands of poor wanderers over the face of the globe, of every rank and in every clime.
The young man said nothing until after the old people had gone out to bring in the wanderers. Then: "You must be fond, indeed, of your sister, my little lass," he said kindly. "Sir," said Hannah, "you should see my sister!" And just then he did see her.
During more than a century they become wanderers, expelled, then recalled, passing and repassing frontiers, leaving a country amidst cries of hatred to return to it as soon as quiet has been restored. Finally, for supreme disaster, they are suppressed by one pope, but another re-establishes them, and since then they have been virtually tolerated everywhere.
The stern environment of Northern poverty stands out in terrible contrast with the teeming prodigality of tropical Nature, offering all the richest fruits of earth in full measure to these early wanderers across the Southern seas. The mountain railway, curving round ridge or precipice and spanning sombre gorge with bridge and aqueduct, affords superb views of the unrivalled plains.
Always it goes on, and always it calls to those that follow it. Tiny path that it is, worn by the feet of earth's wanderers, it is the thread which has knit together the solid places of the earth. The path of feet in the wilderness is the onward march of life itself. City-dwellers know nothing of the trail. Poor followers of the pavements, what to them is this six-inch path of glory?
After they had waded through the sand and clambered over the rocks for hours, a golden band of light shone in the east. The bushes and trees of the oasis of Descheme stood out against it. Here Dismas left the wanderers to their safe road, in order to return to the cave. When he turned back with good wishes for the rest of their journey, he was met by a look from the child's shining eyes.
Come on, Mona, let's take Patty and Daisy home in one of the cars; the rest can follow in the other." Two cars of people had come over to escort the wanderers home, so this plan was agreed upon. But somehow, Bill Farnsworth managed to hasten the glazier's task, so that all were ready to depart at once. "I'll drive the big car," cried Bill.
It is a curious thing, but true, that our herd-boys and others were sometimes struck with the stage-fever. Thrums lost boys to the showmen even in winter. On the whole, the farmers and the people generally were wonderfully long-suffering with these wanderers, who I believe were more honest than was to be expected.
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