Circus Boys Catch Mange!

Just kidding. Wouldn't want that to happen to anybody (link leads to grossness, but you can take it, bucko).

Sorry. Just trying to liven up a series that, remarkably, is already flagging. Remarkably, of course, because there's only one in the series.

Until now. Flagging be damned.

The lad rose as if drawn by invisible hands, reached out and clasped the photograph to him. Then the pent-up tears welled up in a flood. Phil Forrest threw himself on his bed and sobbed out his bitter grief. He did not hear the thump of Abner Adams' cane on the bedroom door, nor the angry demands that he open it.

"Mother, mother!" breathed the unhappy boy, as his sobs gradually merged into long-drawn, trembling sighs. "I'll do it--I'll be a man, mother!" he exlaimed in a voice in which there was not the slightest tremor now. "I'll fight the battle and I'll win."--from The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings, or, Making the Start in the Sawdust Life (1910), by Edgar B.P. Darlington.

(Credits: viagra jokes from Andy Akien; mange photos from the wonderfully named Graphic Images of Parasites on THE Ohio State University biology department website; sickening lovers photo from Discount Specialty Gifts; canopy dog bed from Puppy Boutique; candy cane from Anvari.org; and map of Bull Run from the University of Georgia Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.)