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Nobody but chumps, he said, would want to hurt his feelings by making him do trick-mule acts at poor old Bill's funeral 'specially as him and Bill always had been friendly, and nobody was sorrier than he was about the accident that had occurred. Santa was a first-rate talker, and everybody but Cherry allowed what he was letting out had a good deal of sense in it.

"When the time comes for Emily to do her turn, she just goes ambling on behind Windy and cuts up more didoes than any trick-mule that ever lived. She smokes a pipe, and she toots on a brass horn, and waits on table while Windy pretends to eat, and stands on her head, and plays baseball with him and so forth and so on, for fifteen minutes, winding up by waving the Amurikin flag over her head.

But say! What if they did, eh? The place would be all full of people, laughing at the country jake that comes out to ride the trick-mule, and you'd happen to look up and see where the canvas was ju-u-ust beginning to blaze, and you'd jump up and holler: "Fire! Fire!" as loud as ever you could because you saw it first, and you'd point to the place. Excitement? Well, I guess yes.

Now, so thickly was it built with neat white houses, that only with strenuous clairvoyance could famous old localities be identified: the ball-ground; the marshy stretch that made skating in winter, or, in spring, a fascinating place to catch cold by wading; the grassy common where "shinny" was played by day and "Yellow Horn" by night; the enchanted spot where the circus built airy castles of canvas, and where, on the day after, one might plant one's feet squarely in the magic ring, on the veritable spot, perchance, where the clown had superhumanly ridden the difficult trick-mule after local volunteers had failed so entertainingly.