ROMANCE is fading from the road show. Seventy-five years ago a circus was manned, propelled, defended by flesh and blood. The performers lashed straining horses over thirty miles or more of treacherous roads between stands; the same performers and the same horses, aided perhaps by a few extra laborers, unloaded the wagons, set up the show, gave two or three performances, licked the inevitable native rowdies, and proceeded to the next stand without balking at the personal hardship involved. In that day the life produced a sturdy and valiant personnel; those who could not use their fists as well as their heads soon dropped by the wayside, along with those who could not drive six horses or swing a sledge. As the weaklings dropped, so were the daring attracted; daring and strength in physical achievement begot daring and strength in verbal expression, and by the time the American circus was ready to pass from the horseand-wagon stage to the railroad-era, it was manned by a type half roughneck, half gentleman, and spoke a jargon as swaggering and as picturesque as itself. During a period of forty years or so this type flourished, always sapped and enervated, however, by ever-increasing mechanical aids. Steam engines did the hauling, elephants and horses loaded and unloaded, canvas was hauled up with steam winches or powerful teams or horses, the work was specialized, living quarters for the crew and personnel improved, the customer was treated with some degree of consideration-and now it is all changed. The modern circus or carnival is a motorized caravan, groomed by skilled mechanics, and carrying performers each of whom is an expert in his or her profession. These performers live in good hotels along the way, or, as in the case of those large circuses operated by the Ringling interests, are cared for in comfortable quarters aboard the trains, while even the razor-backs or canvas-men eat tasty food served in a clean mess-tent. Profanity is, to a large extent, eliminated from the business; courtesy is shown between employer and employee, and, to an even more marked degree, from employee to customer. For the circus, like other big business firms, has adopted the idea of service, and the customer's comfort is second only to his capacity to pay.' This commercialization