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+Project Gutenberg's Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus, by George W. Peck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus
+
+Author: George W. Peck
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2003 [EBook #10212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PECK'S BAD BOY AT THE CIRCUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Gundry and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+PECK'S BAD BOY
+WITH THE CIRCUS
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Pa Kept Mauling the Lion]
+
+
+
+
+PECK'S BAD BOY
+WITH THE CIRCUS
+
+
+BY HON. GEO. W. PECK
+
+
+Author of Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, Peck's Bad Boy Abroad,
+Peck's Uncle Ike and the Red Headed Boy,
+Etc., Etc.
+
+
+    Relating the experiences of the Bad Boy and his Dad during their
+    travels with a Circus. The Bad Boy gets his Dad in hot water in
+    every conceivable way, and plays jokes and pranks on everyone, from
+    the Clown to the Manager, and from the Monkey to the Elephant.
+    Rip-roaring, side-splitting fun from beginning to end.
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY C. FRINK
+
+
+
+Copyright 1905 by
+Joseph B. Bowles
+
+
+Copyright 1906, by
+Thompson & Thomas
+
+
+Made in U.S.A.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Bad Boy Begins a Diary--Dad Has Become Manager for a Circus--The Bad
+Boy Expects to Curry the Hyena and Do Stunts on the Trapeze--Ma Says Pa
+Will Ogle the Circassian Beauty--Pa Buys Some Circus Clothes and Lets
+His Whiskers Grow.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Bad Boy Visits the Circus in Winter Quarters--He Meets the Circus
+Performers--- Dad Rides a Horse and Gets Tossed in a Blanket--The Bad
+Boy Goes "Kangarooing"--Pa's Clothes Cause Excitement Among the
+Animals--A Monkey Steals His Watch.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Pa Reproves the Fat Woman for Losing Flesh--The Bearded Lady Faints in
+Pa's Arms--The Bad Boy Introduced Into Animal Society--They Pull the Boa
+Constrictor's Ulcerated Tooth.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Pa Finds the Fat Lady a Burden--The Bad Boy Makes His First Public
+Appearance--He Talks Politics with the Midget--Pa Meets with Numerous
+Accidents.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Rogue Elephant Creates a Panic and Pa Proves Himself a Hero--The Bad
+Boy Gets Scolded for "Being Tough"--He Finds that Audiences Like
+Accidents.
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Bad Boy Puts Fly-Paper in the Bob Cat's Cage--The Bob Cat Causes a
+Panic in the Main Tent--The Midget Quarrels with the Giant--Pa is Almost
+Arrested for Kidnapping and the Ostrich Swallows His Diamond Stud.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The Circus Has A Yellow Fever Scare--The Bad Boy and His Dad Dress Up as
+Hottentots--Pa Takes a Mustard Bath and Attends a Revival Meeting.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Pa Tales the Place of the Fat Woman with Disastrous Results--A Kentucky
+Colonel Causes a Row--Pa Tries to Roar Like a Lion and the Rhinoceros
+Objects--Pa Plays the Slot-Machine and Gets the Worst of It.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+The Bad Boy feeds Cayenne Pepper to the Sacred Cow--He and His Pa Ride
+in a Circus Parade With the Circassian Beauties--A Tipsy Elephant Lands
+Them in a Public Fountain--Pa Makes the Acquaintance of John L.
+Sullivan.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The Bad Boy and His Pa Drive a Roman Chariot--They Win the Race, but
+Meet With Difficulties--The Bearded Lady to the Rescue--A Farmer's Cart
+Breaks Up the Circus Procession.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The Bad Boy and His Pa in a Railroad Wreck--Pa Rescues the "Other
+Freaks"--- They Spend the Night on a Meadow--A Near-Sighted Claim Agent
+Settles for Damages--Pa Plays Deaf and Dumb and Gets Ten Thousand.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The Bad Boy Causes Trouble Between the Russian Cossacks and the Jap
+Jugglers--A Jap Tight-Rope Walker Jiu Jitsu's Pa--The Animals Go on a
+Strike--Pa Runs the Menagerie for a Day and Wins Their Gratitude.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The Circus Strikes the Quaker City--They Go on a Ginger Ale Jag--Pa
+Breaks Up an Indian War Dance and Comes Near Being Burned Alive--The
+World's Fair Cannibals Have a Roast Dog Feast.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A Newport Monk Is Added to the Show--The Bay Teaches Him Some "Manly
+Tricks"--The Tent Blows Down and a Panic Follows--Pa Manages the Animal
+Act Which Ends in a Novel Manner.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+The Bad Boy Feeds the Menagerie Scotch Snuff--Pa Gets Mauled by the
+Sneezing Animals--Pa Takes a Midnight Ride on a Mule to Escape
+Punishment.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A Senator's Son Bets the Bad Boy That Elephants Are Cowards--They Let a
+Bag of Rats Loose at the Afternoon Performance--The Elephants Stampede,
+Pa Fractures a Rib and General Pandemonium Reigns.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Bad Boy and the Senator's Son Go on an Elephant Chase--The Senator's
+Son Gets His Friend a Bid to Dinner at the White House--The Trained Seal
+Swallows an Alarm Clock.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The Show Strikes Virginia and the Educated Ourang Outang Has the
+Whooping Cough--The Bad Boy Plays the Part of a Monkey, but They Forget
+to Pin on a Tail.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The Circus People Visit a Southern Plantation--Pa, the Giant and the Fat
+Woman Are Chased by Bloodhounds--The Bad Boy "Runs the Gauntlet."
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+The Bad Boy Goes After a Mess of White Turnips for the Menagerie--He
+Feeds the Animals Horseradish, but Gets the Worst of the Deal.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The Bad Boy and His Pa Inject a Little Politics Into the Show--Rival
+Bands of Atlanta Citizens Meet in the Circus Tent--- A Bunch of Angry
+Hornets Causes Much Bitter Feeling.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+The Show Does Poor Business in the South--Pa Side Tracks a Circus Car
+Filled with Creditors--A Performance Given "For the Poor," Fills the
+Treasury--A Wild West Man Buncoes the Show.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+The Circus Has Bad Luck in Indian Territory--A Herd of Animals Turned
+Out to Graze Is Stampeded by Indians--They Go Dashing Over the Plains,
+and the Circus Tent Follows, Picked Up by a Cyclone.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Pa Is Sent to a Hospital to Recuperate--The Bad Boy Discourages Other
+Boys from Running Away with the Circus--He Makes Them Water the Camels,
+Curry the Hyenas and Put Insect Powder on the Buffaloes.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Pa Breaks in the Zebras and Drives a Six-in-Hand Team in the Parade--The
+Freaks Have a Narrow Escape from Drowning.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+The Rings Are So Muddy the Performers Have to Wear Rubber Boots--The
+Freaks Present Pa with a Big Heart of Roses--The Show Closes and the Bad
+Boy Starts West with His Pa in Search of Attractions for the Coming
+Season.
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+
+Pa Kept Mauling the Lion.
+
+And Pa Swatted Her on the Back.
+
+The Sacred Cow Chased Ma Up the Church Stairs.
+
+Was Suspended in the Air.
+
+A Leopard Reached Out His Paw and Gathered in the Tail of Pa's Coat
+
+I Will Hold You Responsible for This!
+
+They Had to Turn the Hose on Pa.
+
+They Threw Boiled Potatoes and Scrambled Eggs at Pa.
+
+She Kicked Pa's Hat Off.
+
+Bolivar Took Half a Watermelon and Put the Red Side on Top of Pa's Head.
+
+Pa Turned the Cock of the Extinguisher and Pointed the Nozzle at
+Bolivar's Head.
+
+The Bob Cat Struck Pa on the Back.
+
+The Man Tackled Pa.
+
+The Doctor Said It Was an Unmistakable Case of Yellow Fever.
+
+After Scratching His Head a Minute, Ike Turned and Walked Toward the
+Preacher.
+
+I Punctured Pa's Tires.
+
+Chased by Police.
+
+The Elephant kept Ducking Pa and Swabbing Out the Bottom of the
+Fountain.
+
+John L. Slatted Pa Just as Though He Was a Child.
+
+Her Cart, Team and All, Were Thrown Right Against the Band.
+
+Pa Struck on His Head Against a Wagon Wheel.
+
+Pa Got an Ax and Cut the Fat Woman Out.
+
+What Hit Him? That's the Worst Case I Ever Saw!
+
+Gee, but Didn't That Russian Talk Kopec and Damski.
+
+O, but the Jap Didn't Do a Thing to Pa!
+
+The Indians Tied Pa to a Tree and Began to Pile Sticks Around Him.
+
+The Fat Woman Jabbed Pa with Her Parasol.
+
+When She Saw the Baboon She Yelled Fire.
+
+The Lion Sneezed and Blew Pa Clear Across the Tent.
+
+Pa Rode Out of Town and Rode All Night.
+
+Bolivar Swatted Pa Clear Across the Ring.
+
+Pa, Do Not Fear.
+
+We Met Some Farmers.
+
+Old Gentleman, You Ought to Come Down Off Your Perch.
+
+The Keeper Who Trained the Ourang Outang Took Me in Hand.
+
+He Hit Me Right in the Eye.
+
+Here, Mr. Confederate, I Am not a Union Prisoner.
+
+I Yelled Murder and Ran Between the Giant's Legs.
+
+The Camel Kicked an Arab Off a Rug.
+
+Pa Tasted of It.
+
+He Hit Pa Over the Head with His Chinese Lantern.
+
+They Stampeded Like They Never Met a Hornet Before.
+
+The Sacred Cow Chased Pa Up into the Rafters of the Car.
+
+The Pony Was Off Like a Rabbit.
+
+The Boss Canvasman Went into a Cactus.
+
+Dad Was Only Hitting the High Places.
+
+The Bull Tossed the Boy Through the Tent.
+
+Pa Jumped Like a Box Car.
+
+There Never Was Such a Runaway Since the Days of Ben Hur.
+
+The Zebras Turned Short and Tipped the Tally-ho Over into the Water.
+
+I Will Search for the Wildest of Red Men.
+
+They Tossed Pa Up in the Blanket.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Peck's Bad Boy With the Circus.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy Begins a Diary--Dad Has Become Manager for a Circus--The
+    Bad Boy Expects to Curry the Hyena and Do Stunts on the Trapeze--Ma
+    Says Pa Will Ogle the Circassian Beauty--- Pa Buys Some Circus
+    Clothes and Lets His Whiskers Grow.
+
+
+April 10, 19..--I never thought it would come to this, that I should
+keep a diary, because I am not a good little boy. Nobody ever keeps a
+diary except a boy that wants to be an angel, and with the angels stand,
+or a girl that is in love, or an old maid that can't catch a man unless
+she writes down her emotions and leaves them around so some man will
+read them, and swallow the bait and not feel the hook in his gills, or a
+truly good bank cashier who teaches Sunday school, and skips out for
+Canada some Saturday night, after the bank closes, and on Monday morning
+they find the combination of the lock on the safe changed, and when they
+hire a reformed burglar to open the lock the money is all gone with the
+cashier. Those are the only people that ever kept a successful diary.
+
+But I had to promise ma that I would keep a diary, so she could read it,
+or I never could have got her consent for me to go with pa on the road
+with a circus. All ma asks of me is to tell the truth about everything
+that happens to me and to pa during the whole summer, and I have
+consented, and I can see my finish, and pa's finish and ma's finish, and
+the finish of the circus that is going to take us along.
+
+Gee, but we have had a hot time at our house since pa and I got back
+from our trip abroad. I brought pa back in better health than he was
+when he went away, but he has got so accustomed to excitement that I
+knew something would be doing pretty soon, so I was not surprised when
+he told us at the breakfast table that he supposed he should have to go
+and travel with a circus this summer.
+
+Ma looked at pa as though she wanted to call the police and am ambulance
+to take him to the emergency hospital. He looked at ma and at me,
+speared another waffle, and said: "I know you will think I am nutty, but
+for almost ten years I have had a block of stock in a circus and
+menagerie. I went into it to help some young circus fellows, and put up
+quite a bunch of money, because they were honest and poor, and for a few
+years things went wrong, and I thought my money was gone, but for the
+last six years the circus has paid dividends bigger than Standard Oil,
+and today it stands away up among the financial successes, and the
+dividends on my citrus stock is better than any bank stock I have got,
+and it comes just like finding money. The company decided at its annual
+meeting to invite me to take the position of one of the managers, and I
+shall soon go to the winter quarters of the show, to arrange to put it
+on the road about the 1st of May. Now any remarks may be made, pro or
+con, in regard to my sanity, see?"
+
+Well, ma swallowed something crosswise down her Sunday throat, and
+choked, and pa swatted her on the back so she would cough it up, and
+when she could speak she said: "Pa, do you have to wear tights, and jump
+through hoops on the back of a horse, and cut up didoes, at your time of
+life? For if you do I can never live to witness any such performances."
+
+[Illustration: Pa Swatted Her on the Back.]
+
+Pa was calm, and did not fly off the handle, but he just said, kindly:
+"Mother, you have vague ideas of the duties of the owners of a circus.
+The owners hire performers to do stunts, and break their necks, while we
+manage them and take in the shekels from the Reubens who come into town
+on circus day. We proprietors touch the button, and the actors and
+animals do the rest. I shall be a director who directs, a man who sets a
+dignified and pious example to the men and women who adorn the
+profession, coming as they do from all climes, and your pa will be the
+guide, philosopher and friend of all who belong to the grandest
+aggregation of talent ever gathered under one canvas, at one price of
+admission, and do not fail to witness the concert which will be given
+under this canvas after the main performance is over."
+
+Ma looked at pa pretty savage, and said: "O, I see, you are going to be
+ringmaster, but what is to become of Hennery and me while you are
+cracking your whip around the hind legs of the fat woman, and ogling the
+Circassian beauty?"
+
+Pa put his hand on my head and said: "Mother, Hennery will go with me,
+to see that I do not get into any trouble as a circus financier and
+general manager of the menagerie and Wild West aggregation, and
+hippodrome, in the great three-ring circus, and you can stay home and
+give us absent treatment for what ails us, and pack the money I shall
+send you in bales with a hay press, and put it in cold storage till we
+come back in the fall. It is settled, we go to conquer, and the world
+will lay at our feet before the middle of August, and you will be a
+proud woman to own a husband who will be pointed at as the most
+successful amusement purveyor the world has ever witnessed, and a son
+who will start in at the bottom round of the circus ladder and rise,
+step by step, until he will stand beside the great Barnum."
+
+Ma thought seriously for a few minutes, and then she said: "O, pa, if it
+was anything but the circus business you and Hennery went into, like
+selling soap or being a bank defaulter, or something respectable, I
+could look the neighbors in the face, but of course if there is money in
+it, and you feel that the good Lord has called you to the circus field,
+and you will see that Hennery does not stay out nights, and Hennery will
+promise to see that you put on a clean collar occasionally, and you will
+promise me that you will not let any of those circus women in spangles
+make eyes at you, I will consent to your going with the circus, just
+this once, as the doctor has advised that you lead an active life, and I
+guess you will get it traveling with a circus, for it nearly killed me
+that time I took Hennery to see the animals, and the tent blew down, and
+we got separated and the sacred cow chased ma up the church steps, and
+Hennery and a monkey were brought home by a policeman about daylight the
+next morning, that time you were off fishing, and I never told you about
+going to the circus when you were away. So we are circus proprietors,
+are we? Well, it ain't so bad," and ma went upstairs to cry at our
+success, and pa and I went out to walk off the effects of the breaking
+the news to ma.
+
+[Illustration: Sacred Cow Chased Ma Up the Church Steps.]
+
+I had a long talk with pa about our changed circumstances, and asked him
+what I would be expected to do in the show, and he says I will fit in
+anywhere. He says that a boy who knows as much about everything as I
+think I know, but don't know a blamed thing about, will be invaluable
+about a show, and that going into a new business is like going to
+college as a freshman, as all the old circus men will haze us, and we
+must not expect an easy life, but one full of excitement, sleepless
+nights, ginger, the glare of the torchlights, the races, the flying
+trapeze, the smell of the sawdust and tanbark, the howling of the wild
+beasts, and the plaudits of the multitude of jays and jayesses, and it
+will be like one grand circus day spread all over the summer and fall.
+He says he wants me to learn the circus business from the ground up,
+from the currying of the hyenas with a currycomb and brush, to going up
+into the roof of the tent on the trapeze and falling into the net, while
+the audience faints with excitement. I asked pa if he wanted me to keep
+on playing tricks on him while we were on the road, and he said he had
+got so used to my tricks that he couldn't live without them, and he
+didn't want me to let a chance escape to make him have a good time.
+
+April 11.--Ma and pa have had several discussions about what kind of a
+position it is going to leave her in, among the neighbors, for pa and I
+to go off with a circus, and ma wanted to withdraw from the church, and
+board up the windows of the house, and make folks think we had gone to
+the seashore, but pa convinced her that we would have preaching in the
+main tent every Sunday and he says there is no more pious lot of people
+on earth than those who travel with a circus, and then ma wanted to go
+along. She said she could do the mending of the long socks that the
+women wear when they ride barebacked, but we had to shut down on ma's
+going with the show, cause we never could have any fun with a woman to
+look after. Pa says nowadays the men and women who ride on bareback
+horses in the ring dress in regular evening costume, the women with
+low-necked dresses and long trains, and the men with swallow-tail coats
+and patent leather shoes, and they are as polite as dancing masters.
+
+We have compromised with ma, and she is to meet the show at Kalamazoo
+and go with us to Kankakee and Keokuk until she is overcome by nervous
+prostration, when we shall have her go home. Pa thinks ma would last
+about two days with the show, but I guess if she took a course of
+treatment with peanuts and red lemonade one afternoon and evening, she
+would want to throw up her job, and go back home in charge of a stomach
+specialist.
+
+Well, pa showed up at the house in his circus clothes this afternoon,
+and he certainly is a peach. Pa has been letting his chin whiskers grow
+for about six weeks, and today he had them colored black, and he looks
+as though he had swallowed the blacking brush, and left the bunch of
+bristles outside, on his chin. He looks fierce. Then, he has got a new
+brand of silk hat, with a wide, curling brim, and he has had a vest made
+of black and blue check goods, the checks as big as the checks on a
+checker board, and a pair of pants that look like a diamond-back
+rattlesnake, and he has got an imitation diamond stud in his white shirt
+that looks like a paper weight.
+
+Ma wanted to know if there was any law to compel pa to dress like that,
+'cause he looked as though he was a gambler or a train robber. Pa says
+that a circus proprietor has got to look different from anybody else, in
+order to inspire fear and respect on the part of the hands around the
+show, as well as the audiences that flock to the arena, and he asked ma
+if she didn't remember old Dan Rice, and old John Robinson. Ma didn't
+remember them, but she remembered Barnum, because Barnum lectured on
+temperance, and she said she hoped pa would emulate Barnum's example,
+and pa said he would, and then he took a watch chain with links as big
+as a trace chain and spread it across his checkered vest, from one
+pocket to the other, with a life-size gold elk hanging down the middle,
+and ma almost had a convulsion.
+
+Gee, but if pa wears that rig in the menagerie tent the animals will paw
+and bellow like a drove of cattle that smell blood. Pa is going to wear
+a sack coat with his outfit, so as to look tough, and he wouldn't hear
+to ma when she tried to get him to wear a frock coat. He said a frock
+coat was all right in society or among the crowned heads, but when you
+have to mingle with lions and elephants one minute that would snatch the
+tail off a coat and chew it and the next minute you are mixed up with a
+bunch of freaks or a lot of bareback riders or trapeze performers, you
+have got to compromise on a coat that will fit any climate, and not
+cause invidious remarks, whatever that is.
+
+I will have to stand up beside the giant once in a while to show the
+difference in the size of men, and at other times I will have to stand
+beside the midgets and look like a giant myself. We are all packed up,
+and in two days we start for the winter quarters of the show, to pound
+it into shape for the road. By ginger, I can't hardly wait to get there
+and see pa boss things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy Visits the Circus in Winter Quarters--He Meets the
+    Circus Performers--Dad Rides a Horse and Gets Tossed in a
+    Blanket--The Bad Boy Goes "Kangarooing"--Pa's Clothes Cause
+    Excitement Among the Animals--A Monkey Steals His Watch.
+
+
+April 15.--We are now at the winter quarters of the show, in a little
+town, on a farm just outside, where the tent is put up and the animals
+are being cared for in barns, and the performers are limbering up their
+joints, wearing overcoats to turn flip-flaps, and everybody has a cold,
+and looks blue, and all are anxious for warm weather.
+
+Pa created a sensation when we arrived by his stunning clothes, his jet
+black chin whiskers and his watch chain over his checkered vest, and
+when the proprietors introduced pa to the performers and hands, as an
+old stockholder in the show, who would act as assistant manager during
+the season and pa smiled on them with a frown on his forehead, and said
+he hoped his relations with them would be pleasant, one of the old
+canvasmen remarked to a girl who rides two horses at once with the
+horses strapped together, so they can't get too far apart and cause her
+to break in two, said that old goat with the silk hat would last just
+about four weeks, and that he reminded the canvasman of a big dog which
+barked at people as though he would eat them, and at the same time
+wagged his tail, so people would not think he was so confounded
+dangerous.
+
+The principal proprietor of the circus told pa to make himself at home
+around the tent, and not be offended at any pleasantry on the part of
+the attaches of the show, for they were full of fun, and he went off to
+attend to some business and left pa with the gang. They were practicing
+riding bare-backed horses around the ring, with a rope hitched in a belt
+around the waist of the rider and an arm swinging around from the center
+pole, so if they fell off the horse the rope would prevent the rider
+from falling to the ground, a practice that the best riders adopt early
+in the season, the same as new beginners, 'cause they are all stiffened
+up by being out of practice. One man rode around a few times, and pa got
+up close to the ring and was making some comments such as: "Why, any
+condemned fool could ride a horse that way," when the circus gang as
+quick as you could say scat, fastened a belt around pa's stomach, that
+had a ring in it, and before he knew it they had hitched a snap in the
+ring, and pa was hauled up as high as the horse, and his feet rested on
+the horse's back, and the horse started on a gallop.
+
+Well, say, pa was never so surprised in his life, but he dug his heels
+into the horse's back, and tried to look pleasant, and the horse went
+half way around the ring, and just as pa was getting confidence some one
+hit the horse on the ham with a piece of board, and the horse went out
+from under pa and he began to fall over backwards, and I thought his
+circus career would end right there, when the man who had hold of the
+rope pulled up, and pa was suspended in the air by the ring in the belt,
+back up, and stomach hanging down like a pillow, his watch dangling
+about a foot down towards the ring, and the horse came around the ring
+again and as he went under pa, pa tried to get his feet on the horse's
+back, but he couldn't make it work, and pa said, as cross as could be:
+"Lookahere, you fellers, you let me down, or I will discharge every
+mother's son of you."
+
+[Illustration: Pa Was Suspended in the Air.]
+
+But they didn't seem to be scared, for one man caught the horse and let
+it out of the ring, and the man who handled the rope tied it to the
+center pole by a half hitch, and the fellows all went into the dressing
+room to play cinch on the trunks, leaving pa hanging there. Just then
+the boss canvasman came along and he said: "Hello, old man, what you
+doing up there?" And pa said some of the pirates in the show had
+kidnaped him, and seemed to be holding him up for a ransom, and he said
+he would give ten dollars if some one would let him down.
+
+The boss canvasman said he could fix it for ten, all right, and he blew
+a whistle, and the gang came back, and the boss said: "Bring a blanket
+and help this gentleman down;" so they brought a big piece of canvas,
+with handles all around it, and about a dozen fellows held it, and the
+rope man let pa down on the canvas, and unhitched the ring, and when pa
+was in the canvas he laughed and said: "Thanks, gentlemen, I guess I am
+mot much of a horseback rider," and then the fellows pulled on the
+handles of the canvas, and by gosh, pa shot up into the air half-way to
+the top of the tent, and when he came down they caught him in the canvas
+and tossed him up a whole lot of times until pa said: "O, let up, and
+make it $20." Just then the proprietor who had introduced pa to the men
+came in and saw what was going on, and he said: "Here, you heathen, you
+quit this hazing right here," and they let pa down on the floor of the
+ring, and he got up and pulled his pants down, that had got up above his
+knees, and shook himself and took out his roll, and peeled off a $20
+bill and gave it to the canvasman, and he shook hands with them all, and
+said he liked a joke as well as anybody, and for them to spend the money
+to have a good time, and they all laughed and patted pa on the back, and
+said he was a dead game sport, and would be an honor to the profession,
+and that now that he has taken the first degree as a circus man he could
+call on them for any sacrifice, or any work, and he would find that they
+would be Johnny on the spot.
+
+Then he went out to the dining tent and took dinner with the crowd and
+had a jolly time. There was a woman trapeze performer on one side of pa
+at dinner, and she began to kick at once about the meals, and when the
+waiter brought a piece of meat to us all--a great big piece, that looked
+like corned beef, she said: "For heaven's sake, ain't that elephant that
+died all been eaten up yet?" and then she told pa that they had been fed
+on that deceased elephant, until they all felt like they had trunks
+growing out of their heads, and pa poked the meat with his fork, and
+thought it was elephant, and he lost his appetite, and everybody
+laughed. I eat some of it and if it was elephant it was all right.
+
+Well, when dinner was about over, all filled their glasses to drink to
+the health of pa, the old stockholder and new manager, and pa got up and
+bowed, and made a little speech, and when he sat down one of the circus
+girls was in his chair, and he sat in her lap, and the crowd all yelled,
+except a Spanish bull-fighter who seemed to be the husband of the woman
+pa sat on, and he wanted pa's blood, but the old circus manager took him
+away to save pa from trouble, and he glared back at pa, and I think he
+will stab pa with a dirk knife.
+
+We got out of the dining tent, and went to the barn, where the animals
+are kept all winter, and pa wanted me to become familiar with the habits
+of the beasts, 'cause they were to be in pa's charge, with the keepers
+of the different kinds of animals to report to pa. Nobody need tell me
+that animals have no human instincts, and do not know how to take a
+joke. We are apt to think that wild animals in captivity are worrying
+over being confined in cages, and gazed at and commented on by curious
+visitors, and that they dream of the free life they lived in the
+jungles, and sigh to go back where they were, captured, and prowl around
+for food, but you can't fool me. Animals that formerly had to go around
+in the woods, hungry half the time and occasionally gorging themselves
+on a dead animal and sleeping out in the rain in all kinds of weather,
+know when they have struck a good thing in a menagerie, with clean straw
+to sleep in, and when they are hungry all they have to do is to sound
+their bugle and they have pre-digested beefsteak and breakfast food
+brought to them on a silver platter, and if the food is not to their
+liking they set up a kick like a star boarder at a boarding house. Their
+condition in the show, in its changed condition from that of their
+native haunts, is like taking a hobo off the trucks of a freight train
+and taking him to the dining car of the limited, and letting him eat to
+a finish. People talk about animals escaping from captivity, and going
+back to the jungles and humane societies shed tears over the poor,
+sad-eyed captives, sighing for their homes, but you turn them loose at
+South Bend, and run your circus train to New Albany without them and
+they would follow the train and overtake it before the evening
+performance the next day, and you would find them trying to break into
+their cages again, and they would have to be fed.
+
+When pa and I went into the barn where the cages were, to take an
+account of stock, and get acquainted with our animals, they acted just
+like the circus men did when they saw pa's clothes. The animals were
+about half asleep when we went in, but a big lion bent one eye on pa,
+and then he rose up and shook himself and gave a roar and a cough that
+sounded like he had the worst case of pneumonia, and he snorted a couple
+of times, as though he was saying to the other animals: "Here's
+something that will kill you dead, and I want you all to have a piece of
+it, raw," and he brayed some more, and all the animals joined in the
+chorus, the big tiger lying down on his stomach and waving his tail, and
+snarling and showing his teeth like a cat that has located a mouse hole,
+and the tiger seemed to say: "O, I saw it first, and it's mine."
+
+The hyena set up a laugh like a man who is not tickled, but feels that
+it is up to him to laugh at a funny story that he can't see the point of
+at a banquet where Chauncey Depew tells one of his crippled jokes, and
+pa was getting nervous. A big grizzly bear was walking delegate in his
+cage, and he looked at pa as much as to say: "Hello, Teddy, I was not at
+home when you called in Colorado, but you get in this cage, and I will
+make you think the Spanish war was a Sunday school picnic beside what
+you will get from your uncle Ephraim," and a bob cat jumped up into the
+top of his cage and snarled and showed his teeth, and seemed to say:
+"Bring on your whole pack of dogs and I will eat them alive."
+
+Pa threw out his chest in front of a monkey cage, and a monkey snatched
+his watch, and then all the animals began to laugh at pa just like a lot
+of bad boys in school when visitors make a call. Pa went around to visit
+all the animals, officially, while I got interested in a female
+kangaroo, with a couple of babies, not more than three weeks old, and I
+noticed the mother kangaroo made the old man kangaroo, her husband,
+stand around and he acted just like some men I have seen who were afraid
+to say their souls were their own in the presence of their wives.
+
+The female kangaroo is surely a wonder, and seems to be built on plans
+and specifications different from any other animal, cause she has got a
+fur-lined pouch on her stomach, just like a vest, that she carries her
+young in. When the babies are frightened they make a hurry-up move
+towards ma, the pouch opens, and they jump in out of sight, like a
+gopher going into its hole, and the mother looks around as innocent as
+can be, as much as to say: "You can search me. I don't know, honestly,
+where those kids have gone, but they were around here not more than a
+minute ago." And when the fright is over the two heads peep out of the
+top of the pouch, and the old man grunts, as much as to say: "O, come on
+out, there is no danger, and let your ma have a little rest, 'cause she
+is nervous," and then the babies come out and run around the cage, and
+sit up on their hind feet and look wise. That kangaroo pouch is a
+success, and I wonder why nature did not provide pouches for all animals
+to carry their young in. I think Pullman must have got his ideas for the
+upper and lower berths of a sleeping car by seeing a kangaroo pouch. I
+am going to study the kangaroo and make friends with the old man
+kangaroo, 'cause he looks as though he had troubles of his own.
+
+Pa showed up without any coat, while I was kangarooing, and there was a
+rip in his pants, and I asked him what was the trouble, and he said he
+got too near the cage of a leopard that seemed to be asleep, and the
+traitor reached out his paw and gathered in the tail of pa's coat, and
+just snatched it off his back as though it was made of paper.
+
+[Illustration: A Leopard Reached Out His Paw and Gathered In the Tail of
+Pa's Coat.]
+
+Pa is a little discouraged about his experience in the circus the first
+day, but he says it will be great when we get the run of the business.
+He says every day will have its excitement. Tomorrow they are going to
+extract a tooth from the boa-constrictor, and pa and I are going to help
+hold him, while the animal dentist pulls the tooth, and then we scrub
+the rhinoceros, and oil the hippopotamus, and get everything ready to
+start out on the road, and I can't write any more in my diary until
+after we fix the snake. Gee, but he is as long as a clothesline.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+    Pa Reproves the Fat Woman for Losing Flesh--The Bearded Lady Faints
+    in Pa's Arms--The Bad Boy Introduced Into Animal Society--They Pull
+    the Boa Constrictor's Ulcerated Tooth.
+
+
+Winter Quarters of the Only Circus, April 20.--Pa has had a hard job
+today. The boss complained to pa that the fat woman had been taking
+anti-fat, or dieting, or something, 'cause she was losing flesh, and the
+living skeleton was beginning to fat up. He wanted pa to call them into
+the office and have a diplomatic talk with them about their condition,
+'cause if this thing continued they would ruin the show.
+
+So pa went to the office and sent for them, and I was there as a
+witness, in case of trouble. The fat woman came in first, and there was
+no chair big enough for her, so she sat down on a leather lounge, which
+broke and let her down on the floor, and pa tried to help her up, but it
+was like lifting a load of hay. So he leaned her against the wall and
+said:
+
+"Madame, the management has detailed me to censure you for losing flesh,
+and I am instructed to say if you do not manage to take on about fifty
+pounds more flesh before the show starts on the road, you don't go
+along. What you want to do is to eat more starchy food and sleep more at
+night. They tell me you go out nights to dances and drink high balls,
+and this has got to stop. Drink beer and eat cheese sandwiches at night,
+or it is all off. This show can't afford to take along no 400-pound
+fairy for a fat woman when the contract calls for a 500-pound mountain
+of flesh, see?" and pa looked just as stern as could be.
+
+The fat woman began to cry and sob, so it sounded like an engine blowing
+off steam, and she told pa that the cause of her losing flesh was that
+she was in love with the living skeleton, and that he had been paying
+attention to the bearded woman, and she would scratch her eyes out if
+she could catch her. Just then the living skeleton came in, and when he
+saw the fat woman sitting on the floor crying, and pa talking soothing
+to her and telling her he could appreciate her condition, 'cause he had
+been in love some hisself, the skeleton pushed pa away and tried to lift
+it, and said: "What is the matter with my itty tootsy-wootsy, and what
+has the bad old man with spinach on his chin been doing to you?"
+
+Then he turned on pa and his legs began to shake and rattle like a pair
+of bones in a minstrel show, and he said: "I will hold you responsible
+for this." Pa said he was not going to interfere in the love affairs of
+any of the freaks, and just then the bearded woman came in, and when she
+saw the living skeleton holding the hand of the fat woman, who sat on
+the floor like a balloon blowed up, the bearded woman gave a kick at the
+living skeleton which sounded like clothes bars falling down in the
+laundry, and she grabbed the fat woman's blonde wig and pulled it off,
+and then the bearded woman began to cry and she threw herself into pa's
+arms and began to sob on his bosom and mingle her whiskers with his.
+
+[Illustration: "I Will Hold You Responsible for This!"]
+
+Pa yelled for help, and I thought it was time for me to be doing
+something, so I went outside the office to the fire alarm box and
+touched a button, and then I run like thunder for the police, and the
+firemen came with the extinguishers and began to throw chemically
+charged water into the room, and the police dragged out the fat woman,
+who had fainted, and the living skeleton, whom she had pulled down into
+her lap, and laid them out in the ring, and then they got hold of pa and
+pulled him out, and the bearded woman had fainted in pa's arms and the
+stove was tipped over and was setting fire to the furniture and they
+brought the bearded woman and the fat woman to their senses by pouring
+water on them from a hose. Finally they were sent to their quarters, and
+the other owner of the show came to pa and said he hoped this would be
+the last of that kind of business, as long as pa remained with the show,
+that one of the rules was that no man in an executive capacity must
+under any circumstances take any liberties with any of the females
+connected with the show.
+
+Pa was hot, and said when women got crazy in love no man was safe, and
+the other owner of the show said that was all right this time, but not
+to let it occur again, and pa tried to explain how the bearded woman
+came to jump on to him and faint in his arms, but the owner said: "That
+is all right, but you can't hold 'em in your arms before folks," and
+then pa offered to whip any man who said he was in love with any bearded
+woman, and he pulled off his coat. Just then I came along and told the
+whole story, and then the crowd all had a good laugh, and pa took them
+all out and treated.
+
+I guess it is all settled now, 'cause the living skeleton and the fat
+woman have got permission to get married, the bearded lady is sweet on
+pa, and a girl has just joined the show, who walks a wire, and she says
+I am about the sweetest thing that ever came down the pike, and I guess
+this show business is all right, all right.
+
+April 21.--We are getting acquainted with the animals, and it is just
+like going into society.
+
+There is the aristocracy, which consists of the high born animals, the
+middle class and the low down, common herd, and when you go among the
+animals as strangers you are received just as you would be in society.
+If you are properly introduced to the elephants by the elephant keeper,
+who vouches for your standing and honor, the elephants take to you all
+right and extend to you certain courtesies, same as society people would
+invite you to dinner, but if you wander around and sort of butt in, the
+elephants are on to you in a minute and roll their eyes at you and look
+upon you as a common "person," and if you attempt any familiarity they
+look at you as much as to say: "Sir, I am not allowed to associate with
+any except the 400." Then they turn their backs and act so much like
+shoddy aristocracy that you would swear they were human.
+
+I remember when pa was first in the elephant corral, the keeper forgot
+to tell the big elephant who pa was, and when the keeper raised up one
+foot of the elephant and examined a corn, pa went up and pinched a bunch
+on the elephant's leg and said to the keeper: "That looks to me like a
+spavin," and he nebbed it hard. Well, the elephant groaned like a boy
+with a stone bruise on his heel, and before pa knew what was coming the
+elephant wound his trunk under pa and raised pa upon his tusks and was
+going to toss him in the air and catch him as he came down and walk on
+him, when pa yelled murder and the keeper took an iron hook and hooked
+it into the elephant's skin, and said: "Let that man down," and he let
+pa down easy, and the keeper some way showed the elephant that pa was
+one of the owners of the show, and that elephant acted just as human as
+could be, for he fairly toadied to pa, like a society leader that has
+given the cold shoulder to some one that is as good or better than they,
+or like an impudent employee who has insulted his employer and is afraid
+of losing his job. After that whenever pa and I go around the elephants
+they bow down to us, and I think I could take an iron hook and drive an
+elephant anywhere.
+
+There are all classes among the animals in a menagerie the same as human
+society. The lions are like the leaders of society who are well born and
+proud but poor. They are always invited everywhere, but never entertain,
+though they kick and find fault and ogle everybody and look wise and
+distinguished.
+
+The sacred cattle are too good to live and pose as the pious animals who
+do not want to associate with the bad animals and are constantly wearing
+an air of "I am holier than any of you," but they will reach through the
+bars of their cage and steal alfalfa from the Yak and the mule deer, and
+if they kick about it the sacred cattle look hurt and act like it was
+part of their duty to take up a collection, and they bellow a sort of
+hymn to drown the kicking.
+
+The different kind of goats in a menagerie are the butters-in, or the
+new rich, who get in the way of the society leaders and try to outdo
+them in society stunts, but they smell so that the other animals are
+made sick and the goats are only tolerated because animal society is
+afraid to offend them, for fear the leaders may some time go into
+bankruptcy and the goats will take their places and never let them get a
+smell of the good things of life.
+
+The bears are the working people of the show, and the big grizzlies are
+the walking delegates who control the amalgamated association of working
+bears, and the occupants of the other cages have got to cater to Uncle
+Ephraim, the walking delegate, or be placed on the unfair list and
+slugged.
+
+The hyenas and the jackals and the wolves represent the anarchists who
+are down on everybody in the show, who won't do a thing to help along
+and won't allow any other animal to do anything, and who seem to want to
+burn and slay, to carry a torch by night and poison by day, and want
+everything in the show to be chaos. Those animals are never so happy as
+when the wind and lightning strike the tent, and blow it down and kill
+people and create a panic, and then these anarchists sing and laugh and
+enjoy their peculiar kind of animal religion.
+
+The zebras and giraffes are the dudes of the show, and you can imagine,
+if they were human, they would play tennis and golf, drive four in hands
+and pose to be admired, while the Royal Bengal tigers, if they were half
+human, would drive automobiles at the rate of a mile a minute on crowded
+streets, run over people and never stop to help the wounded, but skip
+away with a sneer, as much as to say: "What are you going to do about
+it?"
+
+The hippopotamus is like the lazy fat man that groans from force of
+habit, sits down as though it was the last act of his life and only gets
+up when the bell rings for meals, and he sweats blood for fear he will
+lose his meal ticket and starve to death.
+
+The seals are the clean-cut Baptists of the show, who believe in
+immersion, and they have more brain than any animals in the show,
+because they live on a fish diet, though they have a pneumonia cough
+that makes you feel like sending for a doctor.
+
+Gee, but last night when we thought spring had come and we could start
+on the road pretty soon, the snow fell about a foot deep, and it was so
+cold that all the animals howled all night, and shivered, and went on a
+regular strike. We had to put blankets on them, and no one of them
+seemed to be comfortable except the polar bears, the arctic foxes and
+the fat woman. The other owners of the show thought it was a good time
+to take the boa constrictor and pull an ulcerated tooth, 'cause he was
+sort of dumpish, so pa and I helped hold the snake, which is about
+twenty feet long.
+
+Pa was up near the snake's head, and when the man with the forceps got
+hold of the tooth and gave it a yank, the confounded snake come to and
+began to stand on his head and thrash around, and pa dropped his hold
+and started to climb the center pole, but he got caught in a gasoline
+torch, and they had to turn a hose on pa, and he was awful scared,
+'cause he always did hate snakes, but they gave the snake chloroform and
+got him quiet, and pa came down, and they gave him a pair of baggy
+trousers belonging to the clown, to go to dinner in, and pa was a sight.
+
+[Illustration: They Had to Turn the Hose on Pa.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+    Pa Finds the Fat Lady a Burden--The Bad Boy Makes His First Public
+    Appearance--He Talks Politics with the Midget--Pa Meets with
+    Numerous Accidents.
+
+
+May 1.--We had the darndest time getting packed up and started on the
+road. How in the name of heaven we ever got half the things on the cars
+is more than I know, but it seems as though the circus company had a man
+to look after everything, and he had men under him to look after his
+regular share of things, so when the cars were loaded, and the boss
+clapped his hands, and the engineer tooted his whistle, there wasn't a
+tent stake or a rope, or a board seat, or anything left behind. Every
+man knew exactly where the things were that he was responsible for, so
+he could lay his hands on them in the dark, and he knew just what wagon
+his stuff was to go in.
+
+Gee, but you talk about system, there is no business in the world that
+has a system like a show on the road. Every performer was in his or her
+section in the sleeper, and pa and I got an end section with the freaks,
+the fat woman across the aisle from us. That fat woman is going to make
+life a burden for pa, I can see that plain enough. She is engaged to the
+living skeleton, and he sleeps in the upper berth, over her, and he is
+jealous of pa, while the fat woman has got to depending on pa to do
+little things for her.
+
+Of course, the first night out is always the worst on a sleeper, and the
+poor woman is nervous, and when the animal train, in the second section,
+ran on a side track beside our train of sleepers, and Rajah, the boss
+lion, got woke up and exploded one of his roars, within six feet of the
+fat woman's berth, she just gave one yell, and reared up, and came down
+hard in the berth. Something broke, and she went right through the
+bottom of the berth to the floor, doubled up like a jackknife.
+
+Pa got up and went to her berth, though I told him to keep away, 'cause
+he would get into trouble. First he stumbled over one of her shoes, and
+said he thought he had told everybody to keep their telescope valises in
+the baggage car, and that made her mad. Then he reached in the berth and
+got hold of one of her feet, and pa got the men to help and they got her
+out, but she seemed all squshed together. She sat up all night and
+wanted to lean on pa, but the skeleton kept his head over the rail of
+the upper berth and his snake-like eye never left pa all night.
+
+The bearded woman got up out of her berth about daylight, to go to the
+toilet room for a shave, or a hair cut, or something, and when she saw
+pa trying to soothe the fat woman and hold her from breaking in two, she
+screamed and slapped pa's face, and had a mess of hysterics. The fat
+woman grabbed a couple of handfuls of female whiskers, and was going to
+pull them out by the roots, when the bearded woman begged her not to
+pull them out, as to lose her whiskers would destroy her means of
+livelihood.
+
+Then the bugle blew for everybody to get up and go to the show lot, and
+put up the tents for the first show of the season. When we got out of
+the sleeper we asked where we were, and a man told pa we were at Peoria,
+Ill., and he wanted pa to give him a complimentary ticket for telling
+what town we were in, but pa looked fierce at the man and asked what
+kind of an easy mark he took him for, and the man slunk away. You
+wouldn't think they could unload those two trains of cars, about 80 in
+all, in a week, but when we got out the horses were hitched on the
+wagons, and in 15 minutes they were loaded and on the way to the lot,
+and pa and I got on the first wagon.
+
+Talk about system. The surveyors were there ahead of us, and had
+measured off the lot and pushed wire stakes in the ground where the grub
+tent was to be, and when the first wagon of the grub outfit arrived,
+which contained a big range, big enough to cook for a thousand men,
+stove pipes were put on, which telescoped up into the air, and in two
+minutes a fire was built and bacon and potatoes and coffee were cooking,
+local bread wagons were unloading bread on the grass, 50 men put up
+poles and spread the tent on, and others set up tables in the tent, and
+in half an hour breakfast was served to the first 500 men. Pa and I drew
+up to the first table, but there was a yell to "put 'em out," and we
+found we had sat down to the table of the negro canvasmen, and they
+struck because they would not associate on an equality with white trash.
+
+Gee, but pa was mad. He said he was as good as any nigger, and that made
+them mad and they threw boiled potatoes and scrambled eggs at pa, and we
+had to retire, but when pa complained to the boss canvasman, he told pa
+to go and eat with the freaks and try and keep in his place.
+
+[Illustration: They Threw Boiled Potatoes and Scrambled Eggs at Pa.]
+
+We got breakfast at another table, and then we went out on the lot to
+superintend the putting up of the big tents. The greatest thing was a
+wagon containing a miniature pile driver, run by steam, which was driven
+around outside of where the big tents were to be, and it drove down the
+big stakes so quick it would make your head swim, and the grounds were
+covered with Peoria people who wanted to see how it was done.
+
+Pa imitated the boss canvasman by walking around the lot with his coat
+over his arm, and a dirty shirt on, trying to look tough, and he bossed
+the sightseers about, and acted cross, and told a man and woman with a
+baby wagon to get off the lot, but pa was called down by the principal
+owner of the show good and plenty.
+
+Said the owner to pa: "Remember, the success of our show depends on the
+friendship and good will of the people who think enough of us to come
+out to see us set up keeping house, and that they are all our guests,
+and if they get in our way we should go around them, and look pleasant.
+We must not get the big head and show that our hair pulls, and that we
+are tired and cross. This is a place of amusement, and all connected
+with the show are expected to heal up sores, instead of causing bruises,
+and if you ever see an employee of this show treating a visitor
+unkindly, send him to the ticket wagon to get his wages, and tell him to
+go away quick, and stay away long."
+
+You could have lit a match to pa's face, it was so red hot, but he
+learned a lesson, for I saw him holding a tired mother's baby up on his
+shoulders, so it could see the drove of camels come up to the lot from
+the train, soon after. It was great to see all the tents go up as if
+raised by machinery, and after all were erected, and the rings were
+graded, and the animals in the menagerie tent all fed and watered, and
+the performers in the dressing-room ready for the afternoon performance,
+pa was the proudest man ever was. He walked all around, inspecting
+everything, and kicking occasionally at something that got balled up,
+and when the crowd came to buy tickets, he stood around the grand
+entrance, looking wise, and he was so good natured that he bet ten
+dollars he could guess which walnut shell a bean was under, which a
+three-card monte man was losing money at, and pa lost his ten with a
+smile. He said he wanted to be kind to the patrons of the show.
+
+This was my first appearance in the show business. I had to stand up
+beside the giant, to show how little I was, and then I had to stand up
+beside the midget to show how big I was compared with him. It went all
+right with the giant, because he was so big I was afraid of him, but I
+thought the midget was about my age, and needed protection, and when the
+crowd surged around us I said: "Don't be afraid, little fellow, I will
+see that no one harms you." The look he gave me was enough to freeze
+water.
+
+When the crowd had gone into the big show tent, what do you think, that
+confounded midget began to ask me how I stood on the tariff question,
+and he argued for free trade, whatever that is, for half an hour, and
+made me think of Bryan during a campaign, and then he branched off on to
+the Monroe doctrine, which I suppose is something connected with a rival
+show, and I guess he would be talking yet, only a big husky fellow came
+along, a fellow about 25 years old, and he stooped over and put his hand
+on the midget's shoulder and said: "Hello, dad," and by gosh, the midget
+introduced me to the big galoot as his youngest son. Wouldn't that skin
+you.
+
+The first day of the season was great, only all the performers had not
+got limbered up. One of the girls on the flying trapeze fell off into
+the net from the roof of the tent and broke her suspenders, so when they
+got her down in the ring it seemed as though everything she had on was
+going to shuck loose, and leave her with nothing but a string of beads,
+and pa went up to wrap his coat around her, and she kicked his hat off
+and ran into the dressing-room. The audience just yelled, and pa blushed
+scarlet, 'cause he saw it was a put-up job to make him ridiculous.
+
+[Illustration: She Kicked Pa's Hat Off.]
+
+During the chariot races pa had to jump like a box car to keep from
+being run over by a four-horse chariot driven by a one-horse girl, and
+the attendants dragged pa out from under a bunch of horses being ridden
+barebacked, like fury. Then two horses hitched together with a strap
+were being ridden by a woman, the strap broke and the horses spread
+apart, and some one yelled that she had split clear in two. Pa rushed in
+to help carry one half of her into the dressing-room, but she wasn't
+hurt at all, 'cause the peanut boy told me she was a rubber woman, and
+you could stretch her half way across the ring, and she would come
+together all right, and eat a hearty meal. Gee, but a circus is a great
+place to study human nature.
+
+In the evening performance at Peoria there came up a windstorm which
+blew down part of the menagerie tent, where the freaks were, and when
+the storm was over, and the tent top was pulled up again, they found pa
+all right. He started to crawl under the canvas, and skip out for fear
+of the animals, but the fat lady caught him and sat down on him.
+
+
+
+WITH THE CIRCUS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+    The Rogue Elephant Creates a Panic and Pa Proves Himself a Hero--The
+    Bad Boy Gets Scolded for "Being Tough"--He Finds That Audiences Like
+    Accidents.
+
+
+May 6.--We had the worst time at Akron last week and pa proved himself a
+hero, though he was swatted good by the rogue elephant before he got his
+second wind and went for the animal.
+
+We have a male elephant that is almost human, 'cause he gets on a tear
+about once a month, like a regular ugly husband. You can't tell when his
+mind is in condition for running amuck, but suddenly he will whoop like
+a drunken man, strike his poor patient wife over the back with his trunk
+and grab her tail and try to pull it out by the roots, and jump up and
+crack his heels together like a drunken shoemaker, and bellow as though
+he was saying he was a bad man from Bitter Creek.
+
+Well, at Akron, the keeper of this elephant, Bolivar, had to go and see
+a girl that he met when the show was here last year, and settle a case
+of breach of promise before a justice of the peace, and the boss told pa
+to look after the elephant for an hour or so. So pa took a pole with a
+hook in it and sat down on a bale of hay to watch Bolivar. It was one of
+those hot days, and Bolivar stood drooping and perspiring, and wishing
+the show was in Alaska, and pa was kind of sleepy, like everybody in the
+show, when suddenly that elephant whooped, and swatted Jeanette, his
+wife, a couple of times, and she cried pitiful, and pa put the hook in
+Bolivar's hide and gave a jerk, and told him to hush up that noise, but
+Bolivar just reared and pitched and walked right through the side of the
+menagerie tent, and seemed to say to the other animals: "Come on, boys;
+there is going to be something doing," and the animals all set up a howl
+in their own language, as though they were saying: "Whooper up, old man,
+and don't let them monkey with you."
+
+Bolivar went out in the street and mowed a wide swath, with pa after
+him, hooking him all the time, but he paid no attention to pa. He put
+his head under the side of a street ear loaded with negroes that had
+come to see the show, dressed in their Sunday clothes, and tipped the
+car over on the side, and the negroes crawled through the windows and
+went uptown yelling murder, while Bolivar went in front of a grocery
+store where there was a pile of watermelons, and began to throw them at
+the people in the street, and the negroes thought an elephant was not so
+bad, so they came back and had a feast.
+
+Pa tried to head off Bolivar at the grocery, but Bolivar took half a
+watermelon and put the red side on top of pa's head, and squashed it
+down so the seeds and juice and pulp ran down pa's shirt and neck, and
+he looked as though murder had been committed, but pa wiped his face on
+his shirt sleeve and showed game, because he kept mauling Bolivar with
+the hook. Bolivar broke up a millinery store by throwing tomatoes at the
+women in the windows, and he went into a yard where a woman was washing
+and squirted the bluing water all over the woman, and all over pa, and
+then he chewed the clothes on the line, and drove the family over the
+fence.
+
+[Illustration: Bolivar Took Half a Watermelon and Put the Red Side on
+Top of Pa's Head.]
+
+You'd a died to see those milliners climb over a high board fence head
+first, and Bolivar actually seemed to laugh. Bolivar run one of his
+tusks through a barrel of gasoline, and it run out on the street car
+track, and an electric spark set it on fire, and the fire department
+turned out, but the engines had to all go around Bolivar, 'cause he
+wouldn't budge an inch, but seemed to say: "Let 'er rip, boys; this is
+the Fourth of July."
+
+The circus men began to come with ropes and clubs, to tie Bolivar and
+throw him, but he escaped into a side street and watched the engines put
+out the fire, and he swung around with his trunk and tusks and wouldn't
+let anyone come near him but pa with the hook, and he seemed to enjoy
+the prodding, but I guess that gave him courage to keep on doing things.
+
+The principal proprietor of the show came along, and when he saw pa with
+watermelon and bluing water all over him, and perspiration rolling down
+his face, he said to pa: "Why don't you take your elephant back to the
+lot, 'cause the afternoon performance is about to begin," and that made
+pa mad, and he said: "You go on with your afternoon performance, and I
+will have Bolivar there all right," and then everybody laughed, but pa
+knew what he was about.
+
+Pa dropped his hook and went to a hose cart and took a Babcock
+extinguisher and strapped it on his back and went up to Bolivar, who was
+tipping over some dummies in front of a clothing store, and pa said:
+"Bolivar, you lay down," but Bolivar threw a seven-dollar suit of
+clothes at pa, and bellowed, as much as to defy pa. Pa turned the cock
+of the extinguisher, and pointed the nozzle at Bolivar's head, and began
+to squirt the medicated water all over him. For a moment Bolivar acted
+as though he couldn't take a joke, and was going to start off again, but
+pa kept squirting, and when the chemical water began to eat into
+Bolivar's hide, the big animal weakened, and trumpeted in token of
+surrender, and kneeled down in front of pa, and finally got down so pa
+could get on his back, and pa took the hook and hooked it in the flap of
+Bolivar's ear, where is a tender spot, and he told Bolivar to get up and
+go back to the tent, and Bolivar was as meek as a lamb, and he got up,
+with pa on his back, and the fire extinguisher on pa's back, and marched
+back to the tent, through the hole he had made coming out. Thousands of
+people followed, and cheered pa, and when they got in the tent pa said
+to the principal owner of the show, who had made fun of him: "Here's
+your elephant, and whenever any of your old animals get on the warpath,
+and you want 'em rounded up, don't forget my number, 'cause I can knock
+the spots out of any animal except a giraffe." The crowd cheered pa
+again and he got down off the elephant, took off his fire extinguisher,
+and handed Bolivar a piece of rag carpet, and said: "Eat it, you old
+catamaran, or I'll kill you," and Bolivar was so scared of pa he eat the
+carpet, which shows the power of brain over avoirdupois, pa says.
+
+[Illustration: Pa Turned the Cock of the Extinguisher and Pointed the
+Nozzle at Bolivar's Head.]
+
+The regular keeper of Bolivar heard he was on the rampage, and he came
+back on the run to conquer him, after pa had got him back in the tent,
+but Bolivar looked at him with a faraway look in his eyes, as much as to
+say: "Seems to me I have met you somewhere before, but a new king has
+been crowned," and he took his old keeper by the back of his coat and
+threw him toward the monkey cage. The monkeys gave the keeper the laugh,
+and Bolivar put his trunk lovingly on pa's shoulder, and seemed to say:
+"Old man, you are it, from this time out." Pa looked proud, and the old
+keeper looked sick. The people in the show are going to present pa with
+a loving cup, and I guess he can run the menagerie part of the show.
+
+When the freaks heard of pa's bravery, the fat woman and the bearded
+lady wanted to hug pa, but pa waved them away, and said he liked the
+elephant business best.
+
+May 7.--I used to think that if I could belong to a circus, and go away
+with it when it left the town I lived in, that it would be pretty near
+going to heaven. I used to hope for the time when I would get nerve
+enough to run away, and go with a circus, and wear a dirty shirt, and be
+around a tent and wash off the legs of a spotted horse with castile
+soap, and when people gathered about me to watch the proceedings, to
+look tough and tell them in a hoarse voice way down my throat, sort of
+husky from sleeping in the wet straw with the spotted horse, that they
+must go on about their business, and not disturb the horse.
+
+I had thought if I should run away and go with a circus, some day, when
+I got far enough away from ma, that I would up and swear, and be tough,
+and when I came home in the fall, and the neighbor boys would come
+around me, I would chew tobacco and tell them of the joys of circus
+life. Well, maybe I will some day, but at present I am sleepy all the
+time.
+
+We have showed six times the last week, and traveled a thousand miles,
+and it seems as though there is nothing doing but putting up and taking
+down tents, and going to and from the cars, and you can't be tough,
+'cause there is always some boss around to tell you to look pleasant if
+you are cross, and to tell you to change your shirt or get out of the
+show, and if you swear at anything you are called down.
+
+Pa and I put in a good deal of time during the afternoon and evening
+performances in the dressing-room, near the door leading to the main
+tent. That is the nearest to being in an insane asylum of any place I
+was ever in. The performers get ready for their several acts in bunches
+or families, all in one spot, and they act serious and jaw each other,
+and each bunch acts as though their act was all there was to the show,
+and if it was cut out for any reason, the show would have to lay up for
+the season, when in fact each one is only a cog in the great wheel, and
+if one cog should slip, the wheel would turn just the same. These people
+never smile before they go in the ring, but just act as though too much
+depended on them to crack a smile. When a bunch is called to go in the
+ring, they all look at each other as though it was the parting of the
+ways, and they clasp hands and go out of the dressing-room as though
+walking on eggs. When they get in the ring they look around to see if
+all eyes are upon them, and bow to people who are looking at something
+going on in another ring, and who don't see them, and then they go
+through their performance with everybody looking somewhere else.
+
+When the act is over the audience seems glad, and clap their hands
+because they are polite, and it don't cost anything to clap hands, and
+the performers turn some more flip flaps, and go running out to the
+dressing-room, and take a peek back into the big tent as though
+expecting an encore, but the audience has forgotten them and is looking
+for the next mess of performers, and the ones who have just been in go
+and lie down on straw and wonder if they can hit the treasurer for an
+advance on their salaries, so they can go to a beer garden and forget it
+all.
+
+An average audience never gets its money's worth unless some one is hurt
+doing some daring act. Pa suggested that they have some one pretend to
+be hurt in every act, and have them picked up and carried out on
+stretchers with doctors wearing red crosses on their arms in attendance,
+giving medicine and restoratives. The show tried it at Bucyrus, O., and
+had seven men and two women injured so they had to be carried out, and
+the audience went wild, and almost mobbed the dressing-room, to see the
+doctor operate on the injured. It was such a great success that next
+week we are going to put in an automobile ambulance and have an
+operating table in the dressing-room with a gauze screen so the
+audiences can see us cut off legs like they do in a hospital. Maybe we
+shall put in a dissecting room if the people seem to demand it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy Puts Fly-Paper in the Bob Cat's Cage--The Bob Cat Causes
+    a Panic in the Main Tent--The Midget Quarrels with the Giant--Pa is
+    Almost Arrested for Kidnaping and the Ostrich Swallows His Diamond
+    Stud.
+
+
+May 14.--This has been a week that would kill anybody, and pa and I talk
+of resigning, though pa feels as though he didn't want to break up the
+show by going away right in the middle of the harvesting of shekels from
+the country men, and I don't know what would happen if pa and I should
+both be taken sick at the same time.
+
+The boss of the menagerie got a new animal by express from Colorado when
+we were leaving Akron, O., and we got it in one end of a cage occupied
+by a happy family of rabbits, coons, a spotted leopard and a hound dog
+and a house cat. The new animal was a bob cat, such as Roosevelt shoots
+when the man has the camera ready to catch him in the act. Say, but that
+bob cat is a terror, and crosser than any animal we got, except the
+hyenas. The bob cat just walked around and snarled and spit at the happy
+family through the bars, and kept them awake all night on the road, and
+the happy family held a sort of convention and I could see by the way
+they all looked at me that they were passing resolutions inviting me to
+break up the bob cat business. The manager of the menagerie told pa he
+wished the confounded bob cat would escape, 'cause he was a blooming
+nuisance, so I thought I would help get rid of the beast, and save the
+show from disgrace. So when we got to Oberlin I thought that was a pious
+community that could stand a wild bob cat, so I put several sheets of
+sticky tanglefoot fly paper in the bob cat's cage and opened the door of
+the cage, after the crowd had gone into the main tent to the big show,
+and the menagerie tent was empty except the keepers. They were all
+asleep under the wagons, and the animals had all curled down for a nap,
+and the freaks were on their platform lolling around, waiting for the
+main show to be out so they could do their stunts over again.
+
+The bob cat got all his four feet in the tanglefoot fly paper, then he
+grabbed a sheet in his mouth and rolled over in a few more sheets, and
+when he was entirely harmless and you couldn't tell what he was, I
+opened the door of the cage and he went out like a rocket, and rolled
+over a few times in the sawdust, and then jumped on the platform with
+the freaks, run over the fat woman, who was laying back in a Morris
+chair, and left one of the sheets of fly paper on her low neck, and it
+stuck like a porous plaster. She yelled that she had been stabbed, and
+pa came along just as the bob cat jumped off the platform, and struck pa
+on the back, and the cat spit at pa, and pa fell over among the sacred
+cattle and rolled under a cow and got on his knees, when the animals all
+began to roar, and pa crawled behind a bale of hay, and a zebra stepped
+on pa's face, and pa yelled "Hey, Rube," which is a grand hailing sign
+of distress when circus men want to fight, and about a hundred of the
+canvasmen came running with tent stakes to hit people with.
+
+[Illustration: The Bob Cat Struck Pa on the Back.]
+
+Pa crawled out from the bale of hay, which he had pulled over him, and
+the hay stuck to the fly paper on pa, and a camel began to eat the hay,
+and he chewed pa's shirt until the hands pulled pa away.
+
+The bob cat escaped into the main tent, just as the Japanese jugglers
+were juggling in No. 1 ring, and the elephants were standing on their
+heads in No. 2 ring, and the flying trapeze artists were jumping from
+one trapeze to another, and the bob cat rushed through the Japanese, and
+amongst the elephants, with the fly paper all over him, and the audience
+fairly yelled, 'cause they thought it was a clown dressed up to do some
+stunt, but the Japanese left the ring in a panic, while the elephants
+got down off their heads and stood on their hind feet and cried like
+children.
+
+The audience saw that something had happened that was serious and they
+all rose to their feet and were going off into a panic when pa and a few
+brave men came and drove the bob cat up a centerpole, away up above the
+torches, and made speeches to the audience, and quieted them down, and
+the performance went on. But pa was a sight, and the head circus man
+told pa he would have to dress better, or forever after hold his peace,
+and pa said if any man could be more patient than he was, with a bob cat
+on his neck, a sacred cow walking on him, and a camel trying to eat his
+whiskers and shirt, they better hire that man.
+
+But it was all fixed up and everybody apologized to everybody, and the
+bob cat went on up the center pole and out on top of the canvas and
+escaped into Ohio, where it will probably be holding office before next
+fall.
+
+Gee, but the giant is a coward. When the bob cat began to run up the
+giant's leg, and then up his back, and then jumped from his shoulder
+onto the fat lady, the giant turned pale and cried, and the midget said
+to him: "O, you big stiff, why didn't you have sand enough to hold the
+kitty till the keeper came? I've a good mind to get on a stepladder and
+kick you," and the cowardly giant cried again, and said if the midget
+ever struck him he would report him to the management. Just then pa came
+along and asked what the row was about, and when pa found that the
+midget was trying to pick a quarrel with the giant, he took the midget
+across his knee and gave him a few spanks, and told him to quit bullying
+the freaks. The midget got up on a barrel and called his son, who is
+bigger than pa, when I stepped in between them and told the midget's son
+if he struck my father I would have his heart's blood, and he quailed,
+and then I bullied the giant, who is a coward, and now they are all
+afraid of me.
+
+I don't see how a big fellow like a giant can be afraid of things
+smaller than he is, and shy when a dog barks, and be afraid some one is
+going to smash him in the jaw, but pa says the size of a man don't make
+any difference, 'cause it is the heart that does the business. A man may
+be big enough and strong enough to tip over a box car, loaded with pig
+iron, but if his heart is one of these little ones intended for a miser,
+with no pepper sauce running from the heart to the arteries and things,
+and a liver that is white, and nerves that are trembly, and no gall to
+speak of, why a big man is liable to be walked all over by a nervy
+little man who is spunky, and gets mad and froths at the mouth.
+
+I have been having great times with the monkeys, and I guess the manager
+will make me superintendent of monkeys, 'cause they all seem to be stuck
+on me, and will do anything I tell them to. Pa says they think I am some
+new kind of a monkey, and they look up to me. I lead out the big monkeys
+that ride the goats and dogs, and have a horse race in the ring, and
+fasten them on the little animals, and when they ride around the ring on
+the dogs and goats and ponies, they keep looking at me as though they
+wanted my approval.
+
+There is one little monkey that sleeps nearly all the time, and I played
+a trick on pa with it that like to got me arrested and licked by a man
+who was mad. A man and woman with a baby in a little wagon were going
+through the menagerie, and it was crowded, and they left the baby and
+wagon in pa's charge, near the monkey cage, while they went to see the
+hippopotamus. Pa is the most accommodating man about holding babies that
+ever was. The baby was asleep when its folks left it in the wagon with
+pa, but it woke up while they were gone, and pa took it out of the baby
+wagon and carried it around just as he would at home, and showed it the
+animals, and held it up on his shoulder, and I took the little monkey
+and put it in the baby wagon, and it went to sleep, and I put a veil
+over it, and was standing by the wagon talking with a peanut butcher,
+when the parents of the baby came back, and the woman raised up the veil
+to see if the child was asleep, when the monkey woke up and put its
+hairy hands up to rub it eyes. The monkey looked up at the woman with
+beady eyes and began to chatter, and she yelled and her husband took a
+look at the monk, and he was mad. They could both see it was a monkey
+instead of a baby, and they asked where the old man with the chin
+whiskers was that they left the baby with, and the peanut butcher said:
+"What, that old guy with the checkered vest? Why, he has gone with the
+baby over to the lion cage, where they are feeding the lions. Don't you
+see him holding the baby upon his shoulder?" By ginger, I never saw two
+people sprint the way they did, 'cause I guess they thought pa was sure
+crazy, and would give the baby to the lions. But I told them the old man
+was all right, and would bring the baby back, and if he didn't they
+could have the monkey, 'cause I didn't want them to think they were
+going to be losers while attending our show. Then I chucked the monkey
+under the chin and said: "Maybe this is your baby, 'cause they change
+wonderfully when they get into a show."
+
+Well, I just had time to put the monkey back in the cage when I saw that
+couple surround pa, and the woman grabbed the baby out of his arms, and
+the man tackled pa around the legs below the knee, and threw pa down
+under the ostrich cage, and said: "You kidnaper! I am a good mind to
+choke the life out of you," and he squeezed pa's windpipe until pa's
+tongue run out, when a canvasman came along and hit the man in the ear,
+and he laid down near a zebra, and the zebra kicked at the man and hit
+pa, 'cause a zebra is crosseyed and kicks like a woman throws a stone,
+and no man knows where it listeth.
+
+[Illustration: The Man Tackled Pa.]
+
+Pa got up to murder the man that choked him, when the ostrich reached
+its head out between the bars of the cage and picked pa's big diamond
+stud off his shirt, big as a piece of rock candy, and swallowed it, and
+pa said that's the limit, and he called the manager and asked him how he
+was going to get his diamond stud out of the ostrich. The manager told
+pa to go to the dressing-room and ask the woman who has charge of the
+wardrobe for the ostrich stomach pump, and when he got the stomach pump
+the manager said the ostrich would cough up the diamond stud. Pa went
+off to the dressing-room to get the ostrich stomach pump, and I knew
+there was going to be trouble, 'cause I thought the manager was just
+stringing pa.
+
+Well, he went up to the woman in the dressing-room, and said he came
+after her stomach pump, ostrich size, and you'd a died to see the
+ruction. The woman looked at pa as though he had escaped from a
+sanitarium, and then she seemed to think he was trying to make game of
+her, and she said: "You old skate, do you know who you have the honor of
+addressing? I am the queen of this realm, and they all kow-tow to me;
+now you come and take your medicine," and before pa could say boo she
+had pulled a big clothes bag over his head and tied it around his feet,
+and said: "Come on, girls, we are going to have roasted missionary," and
+they were lighting a gasoline torch to roast pa, when the owner of the
+show came along and asked what was up. When the wardrobe woman told him
+pa had insulted her, the owner gave her $10 to buy champagne for the
+performers, and she released pa, and he went back to choke his diamond
+out of the ostrich.
+
+Pa says this life is more exciting, if anything, than staying at home,
+and it will either kill him or cure him of a desire to be a Barnum in
+about a month more.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+    The Circus Has a Yellow Fever Scare--The Bad Boy and His Dad Dress
+    Up as Hottentots--Pa Takes a Mustard Bath and Attends a Revival
+    Meeting.
+
+
+Well, we have had a row for your life, and all the excitement anybody
+can stand. We got into Indiana and have had a yellow fever scare, a
+quarantine that lasted one night, so nobody could sleep on our train, a
+riot at Evansville 'cause we took on a couple of female trapeze women
+that came from Honduras, via New Orleans, and a revival of religion, all
+in one bunch, and pa is beginning to get haggard, like a hag.
+
+The female trapeze performers, who had been expected ever since we
+started on the road, had been quarantined at New Orleans, where the
+yellow fever is raging, and finally got through the quarantine guard
+somewhere in Mississippi, and got to us Saturday afternoon, and some
+official telegraphed to the mayor that two yellow fever refugees had
+struck his town to join the circus, and he ordered the chief of police
+to hunt them out, and put them in a pest house. The Honduras females
+were yellow as saffron, but it was caused by the climate of Honduras,
+but the whole show was scared to death for fear we would all have yellow
+fever, and the management detailed pa and I to hide the yellow girls
+from the police.
+
+Pa fixed up one of the cages, with the girls blacked up as Hottentots
+and pa and I blacked up as an African king and prince of the blood, and
+we did stunts in the cage at afternoon and evening performances, and the
+crowd could not keep away from our cage, until pa got hot and unbuttoned
+his shirt and, before we knew it, everybody saw pa's white skin below
+where his face and neck were blacked, and while we were talking
+gibberish to each other a country jake got mad and he led a crowd to
+open the cage and make us remove our shirts to prove that we were
+Hottentots.
+
+When they found we were white people blacked up they wanted their money
+back and were going to tip over the cage, when pa saved the day by
+making a speech, at the evening performance, to the effect that we were
+all yellow fever refugees from New Orleans and the mob lit out on the
+run for the main tent, where they announced that there were four cases
+of fever in the menagerie tent, and that settled it.
+
+The mayor and police closed the show on account of yellow fever, and we
+couldn't get out of the tent. Pa had been quite close to the yellow
+girls and when he found out that yellow fever was a disease that catches
+you when not looking, and in 15 minutes you look like a corpse, and in
+four hours you are liable to be a sure enough corpse, he shook the
+yellow girls, and asked an old sailor what a man ought to do who has
+been exposed to yellow fever, and the old sailor, who has had yellow
+fever lots of times, told pa to strip off his clothes and take a bath of
+prepared mustard, and rub it in thoroughly, and then wipe it off, and
+take a vinegar rub, and after that sprinkle a little red pepper on
+himself, put on different clothes and drink about a gallon of red
+lemonade and he could defy yellow fever.
+
+Pa is an easy mark and he believed the old sailor, who is tattooed and
+makes a show of himself with the freaks, and pa took a change of clothes
+and a bottle of mustard and a cruet of vinegar and a bottle of red
+pepper and went into a dressing room and got behind a wagon and began to
+take the cure the sailor had prescribed. I don't know as it was right to
+do it, but about the time pa had got to the red pepper course and was
+sprinkling it on his skin pretty thick, and he was beginning to get
+pretty hot, and was yelling a little, I told the chief of police, who
+was looking around with the health officer for suspicious cases, that
+there was a man acting sort of queer behind the wagon that had a piece
+of canvas over the wheels. They both rushed in on pa and grabbed him.
+
+Gee! but pa looked and smelled like a plate of pigs' feet and the doctor
+said it was an unmistakable case of yellow fever, he could tell by the
+smell, and then pa turned pale and yellow from fright, and they wrapped
+him up in a piece of canvas and took him away in an emergency hospital
+ambulance, and the whole show at once knew that we were in for a
+quarantine.
+
+[Illustration: The Doctor Said it was an Unmistakable Case of Yellow
+Fever.]
+
+They burned up the suit of clothes pa took off and the one he was going
+to put on, and the ambulance drove away, while pa shook one fist at the
+sailor and one at me, and his skin began to shrink and smart, and he
+yelled, and the audience stampeded, and the show was in the dumps.
+
+We had to stay over Sunday in Evansville, and the show people were so
+scared the manager thought he better have religious services in the tent
+Sunday, so they got a revivalist preacher to preach to them, a fellow
+who used to preach to the cowboys out west. Sunday morning the tough
+fellows in the show said they wouldn't do a thing to the preacher when
+he came on to do his stunt. Their idea was to wait until he got well on
+his sermon and then begin to interrupt him and ask questions, and
+finally to get a blanket and toss him up a few times for luck, and then
+chase him out and have the circus bulldog, that chews the clown's pants,
+catch the minister's coat tail and just scare him plum to death.
+
+The boys said it would be the biggest picnic that ever was--a regular
+barbecue. The boss canvasman said he was opposed to mixing religion with
+the circus business, because the fellows could get all the religion they
+needed in the winter, when the show was laid up and he would see the
+boys through in anything they proposed to do to the sky pilot that was
+going to play his game in ring No. 1 at 10:30 the next day.
+
+Well, after I heard the circus men talk about what they would do to the
+preacher, I was afraid they would kill him, so when he and a helper
+brought a little melodeon into the ring, facing the reserved seats, I
+told him the boys were going to raise a rumpus and drive him out of the
+tent with the bulldog hanging to his coat tails. He put his hand on his
+pistol pocket and pulled a long, blue gun about half way out, and let it
+drop back down beside his leg, and he winked at me and said he guessed
+not, scarcely, as he had preached to crowds so tough that a circus gang
+was a Sunday school in comparison.
+
+Then I got on a front seat to watch the fun. About 800 of the circus
+hands, performers, clowns and peanut butchers, came in, snickering, and
+sat down on the reserved seats in front of the little pulpit, improvised
+from the barrels the elephants stand on, and some of them laughed and
+said: "Hello, Bill!" and "Ah, there!" and "Get on to his collar," and a
+lot of other things.
+
+The little husky preacher had a Salvation Army girl to play the
+melodeon, and he didn't take any notice of the remarks the boys made,
+except to set his jaws together and moisten his lips. Finally they were
+all seated, and he got up to open the services, when a big canvasman, a
+regular Smart Aleck, got up on a seat and said: "Pardner, how you going
+to open this jack pot?"
+
+The crowd laughed and the preacher pulled his long blue gun up out of
+his pocket, and laid it on the barrel, and then picked it up and pointed
+it at the big canvasman and said: "This game is going to be opened with
+this hand, seven of a kind, all 45 caliber, dum-dum bullets, and unless
+you sit down quick I will send a mess of bullets into your carcass right
+where your heart ought to be. If you open your mouth again before I say
+'amen!' real loud at the close of the services, I will shoot all your
+front teeth out. Do you comprehend? If so, be seated."
+
+The big fellow dropped on to the blue seat, as though he had been hit
+with a piledriver, and the crowd was so tickled to have the bully's
+bluff called, that they cheered the preacher. Then he said, "We will now
+open this jack pot with singing and I shall keep one eye on the
+gentleman who was last up, but who is now seated pretty low down."
+
+You could have heard a pin drop.
+
+The preacher wiped his face calmly, and said: "We will now sing and I
+expect every man will sing, and to that end I will appoint Big Ike, who
+asked me how I was going to open this jack pot, to come down in front of
+the seats and lead in the singing, for I know by his voice, which I
+heard in debate, that he is a crackerjack," and the preacher took hold
+of the handle of the blue gun and Big Ike walked down through the rows
+of seats, and as the melodeon began to squawk, Ike got down in front of
+the audience, and some of the boys said: "Bully for you, Ike," and after
+scratching his head a minute Ike turned and walked towards the preacher,
+at the edge of the ring, and I thought there was going to be the worst
+fight ever was, and as the preacher reached for the gun I crawled under
+the seat, and peeked out between the legs of a fat man, but Ike walked
+up to the minister and said, as the melodeon began to cough: "Boys, this
+tune is on Ike." He started it and every man sang.
+
+[Illustration: After Scratching His Head a Minute, Ike Turned and Walked
+Toward the Preacher.]
+
+When it was ended the boys clapped and stamped for an encore, and they
+sang it through again, and the face of the preacher beamed with joy, and
+I saw there was not going to be any fight and I crawled out from under
+the seats.
+
+Pa came in the tent just then, with a new suit of clothes on, having
+been discharged from the hospital as cured of yellow fever, and I gave
+him my seat, and he held me in his lap.
+
+The preacher then preached a sermon that did them all good. He dwelt
+upon the hard life of the showman, and gave them such good advice that
+when it was all over and he said he wanted to shake hands with every man
+in the bunch, Ike marshaled them all up to the ring and introduced them,
+and no minister ever was more cordially congratulated, and they wanted
+him to go along with the show, and preach every Sunday.
+
+The preacher said he couldn't join the show, but he traveled around a
+good deal and he would probably be in the same town with the show
+several times during the summer and he would drop in on them
+occasionally and keep them straight.
+
+Pa was watching the crowd for the sailor who prescribed cayenne pepper
+for yellow fever, and when he saw the sailor come up to the minister,
+with tears in his eyes, and say: "Parson, I has been a bad man and
+killed a man once, but he was a Portuguese sailor, and he had the drop
+on me, the same as you did on Big Ike at the opening of these
+proceedings, and I had to kill him. And I begs the pardon of this old
+gentleman for lying to him." And then pa shook hands with the sailor and
+the parson, and the parson put his blue gun down his trousers leg, and
+said: "By the way, the bulldog you were going to let take a lunch off
+me, is he all right?"
+
+Then the parson and the girl went away, and the boys carried out the
+melodeon, and the quarantine was declared off. After dinner the boys
+took down the tents and put them on the train that Sunday afternoon,
+singing decent songs as they pulled up the stakes and rolled up the
+canvas, and on the train, late in the night, we could hear "Old Hundred"
+being sung as the cars ran through the pennyrial district of Indiana.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+    Pa Takes the Place of the Fat Woman with Disastrous Results--A
+    Kentucky Colonel Causes a Row--Pa Tries to Roar Like a Lion and the
+    Rhinoceros Objects--Pa Plays the Slot-Machine and Gets the Worst of
+    It.
+
+
+This has been an eventful week with the show. We have had heat
+prostrations in Kentucky, nearly the whole show got drunk on 16-year-old
+whisky, and if it hadn't been for the animals keeping sober this show
+would have been pulled for disorderly conduct.
+
+Nobody knows how the row started, but pa says every man in Kentucky
+carries a blue gun and a bottle of red licker, and they wear white hats,
+so the red, white and blue business is all right, only it is a
+combination that is death on a circus. I think one of the ushers, at the
+afternoon performance, told an old colonel that he must move along
+quicker, when the colonel began to talk back, and say, "Who is you
+talkin' too, sah?" And the usher stood it as long as he could, when he
+took the colonel by the collar and sat him down so quick he didn't come
+to for a couple of minutes, and when the colonel got his senses, and
+found that the usher had ushered him into a seat between two gaily
+decorated colored women the trouble began. The colonel never forgot that
+he was a gentleman, for he rose up, took off his hat to the colored
+women, and said: "You must excuse me, ladies, but I shall have to go and
+kill the scoundrel who sat me down with niggers," and he got down off
+the seats and struck the usher with his cane, and the usher yelled:
+"Hey, Rube!" and all the circus people made a rush for the colonel. The
+colonel said, "Men of Kentucky, to the rescue," and before I could crawl
+under the seats the air was full of baggage, seats, tent pins and white
+hats, guns were fired, and blood flowed, and the police pulled
+everybody, and the evening performance was given up.
+
+One of the proprietors of the show got a wen on his head as big as a
+football from being struck by a handle of a revolver, and the colonel
+who started the row was knocked silly by a tray of red lemonade which
+the butcher smashed him with, and the colonel cried because the lemonade
+was all water, and he was afraid it would soak into him and cause him to
+warp. When the lemonade butcher apologized, and the usher told him it
+was all a mistake his being seated with the niggers, the colonel wept on
+their necks and invited the whole crowd to go to his distillery and help
+themselves.
+
+When we got to the next town every man in the show had a grouch and a
+Katzenjammer, and their hair was so sore it was murder and suicide
+combined to comb it.
+
+The way pa escaped injury was 'cause he had to take the place of the fat
+woman on the platform with the freaks, as the fat woman was overcome
+with the heat and had to stay in the car.
+
+The way they fixed pa up to resemble the fat woman was scandalous. They
+have some rubber things in the wardrobe tent that you can blow up and
+make a big arm, and a big leg, and a big stummick, so anybody couldn't
+tell the difference, and they fixed pa up with blowed up clothes of
+flesh colored rubber, and but for his chin whiskers you couldn't tell
+him from the fat woman. He said he wouldn't cut off his whiskers for
+anybody's circus, so they fixed a veil to cover part of his face and put
+the fat woman's dress on pa, and put him up beside the skeleton, the
+midget and the giant.
+
+Pa said he didn't want to do it, 'cause it seemed too much like fraud,
+but they told him the fate of the show depended on our all being willing
+to take any part assigned to us, and so pa sat down and began to fan
+himself, and tried to look flirty like a woman.
+
+The other freaks never noticed but what it was the fat woman until the
+show was half over. It was too much for me, and I just laffed at pa. I
+got up behind him and told him in a whisper that I wanted a dollar to
+play the slot machine, and he told me to go to thunder, and get out of
+there. I couldn't stand it to be insulted by my own father, so I took a
+hat pin out of the hat of the bearded lady and punched it into pa's
+blowed up rubber shirt, and pa began to sis, like a soda fountain, and
+the wind struck the living skeleton and blew him over like a cyclone,
+and by that time pa was blowing off wind in a dozen places that I had
+punctured, and he was scared for fear there wouldn't be anything left of
+him, and the giant saw the fat woman slowly fading away, and the coward
+had heart failure and lay down on the platform. Somebody shouted that
+the fat woman was all melting away, and a fellow who was watering a
+camel out of a bucket came to the rescue and threw the bucket of dirty
+water all over pa, and then I thought I better go away into the tent and
+see the fight, but pa was taken to the dressing room and rescued from
+the shrinking rubber balloons that were busted, and he said he would
+hunt the man that punctured his tire to his dying day, but he didn't
+know it was me.
+
+[Illustration: I Punctured Pa's Tires.]
+
+Gee, it looks to me as though pa has been engaged to act as the easy
+mark in this show. Say, they got pa to practice on roaring like a lion,
+so he could stand behind the cage when the lion has a sore throat and
+roar, and scare folks, and pa has been going around behind the cages,
+every evening, when the menagerie is closed, and the crowd in the main
+tent, making noises that have made the animals look at each other as
+much as to say, "Well, what do you think of that?" The rhinoceros was so
+disgusted at Paducah that he reached out his nose and took pa on his
+horn and held him up to the scorn of the other animals until pa's pants
+gave way and he was a sight, and he was so scared that he got out of the
+tent and made a run for our train, chased by the police, who thought he
+was a burglar that had been eat by a house dog.
+
+[Illustration: Chased by Police.]
+
+The worst thing we have had on pa was at Louisville, where we stayed
+over Sunday. Another fellow and I got a system on slot machines, and one
+day we beat the machines out of a shotbag full of nickels, and when we
+showed up at the tent all the fellows wanted to know how we did it, and
+pa said it was gambling, and we ought not to do it, but he also wanted
+to know how we managed to win, and when we told pa about it pa said it
+was no sin to beat a slot machine, 'cause it was an inanimate thing,
+just a machine, and anybody who could beat a nickel in the slot machine
+at his own game was equal to a Rockefeller.
+
+So after everybody had got excited about our nickels I told them how to
+beat the machine. I told them I didn't get excited and go rushing in
+where angels fear to tread, and feed the slot machine on good hard
+earned nickels of my own, but waited until the countrymen and tenderfeet
+had fed it on nickels until it was too full for utterance. When the
+machine swelled out like it was blowed up, and it kind of wheezed, like
+it was ready to cough up, and was only waiting for an excuse, I put a
+cough lozenger about the size of a nickel in the slot and turned the
+diaphram. The machine shuddered a minute and then had a regular
+hemorrhage, and coughed up a tin cupful of nickels into my hand, and the
+machine seemed to rest easy, and take nourishment again from the silly
+fellows, who thought they could beat it.
+
+Well, sir, the whole crowd was so excited they could hardly wait to find
+a slot machine, and finally they bought nearly all my cough lozengers,
+and went out into the night, and pa and I went along, 'cause pa said he
+understood all the slot machines were owned by Rockefeller, and he made
+more money on them than he did on Standard oil, and the money that he
+gave away to schools and churches was from his rake-off on his slot
+machines. Pa said it would be a good thing if someone could break up the
+reprehensible practice by beating the blasted machines to a finish.
+
+So pa he got a bag to bring back the nickels in, and a bunch of us went
+to a store where one whole side of the place was filled with slot
+machines, and the way the people were playing the game was scandalous.
+Pa watched a machine until the players had fed it so it seemed as though
+it would die unless it got air, and he stepped up and put in a lozenger
+and turned the wheel, and held the bag under the spout for the coin, but
+it didn't come. Some more fellows put in nickels, and the machine gave
+little hacking coughs and coughed up three or four nickels, but nothing
+that seemed at all in the nature of a financial hemorrhage, when pa took
+another lozenger and put it in, and by ginger the machine began to heave
+up nickels like it was in the trough of the sea.
+
+Pa was so excited he forgot to hold the bag, and nickels went all over
+the floor, and everybody made a grab for them, and pa was shoved aside,
+and he swore he would have the place pulled, and just then a law officer
+took pa in charge because he had put a cough lozenger in the slot
+machine, and he searched pa and found a lot more bronchial trochees, and
+pa was in for it on a charge of malpractice, for giving cough medicine
+for the stomach trouble of the slot machine, instead of pepsin tablets.
+
+They took pa in a back room and searched him some more, and found his
+roll, and then a man who said he was a lawyer offered to help pa, and
+keep him out of the penitentiary. He told pa the law of Kentucky made
+the crime of trifling with a slot machine the same as breach of promise,
+or arson, and that he would be lucky if he got off with ten years in the
+pen, with 30 days' solitary confinement in a Turkish bath cell, with
+niggers for companions.
+
+Pa turned blue and asked the lawyer if there was no way out of it, and
+the lawyer told him that for $120 in spot cash he would let him go, and
+fight the case after the show had got out of the state. A hundred and
+twenty-five dollars was the amount they found on pa, and he told them
+that inasmuch as they already had it, they better keep the money and let
+him go, and he would be always a living example of the terrors of
+gambling.
+
+So they let pa go, and all the way to the train he told us he hoped this
+experience would be a lesson to us not to covet the money of the rich,
+and as far as he was concerned, John D. Rockefeller could go plum to
+thunder with his money after this.
+
+Then we got to the car, and found about a dozens of the circus men who
+had been out to beat the slot machines, broke flat, and I had to divide
+my shot bag of nickels with them, that I had won before I let them into
+the game, before they would let me go to bed.
+
+Dad says this circus life is making me pretty tough.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy Feeds Cayenne Pepper to the Sacred Cow--He and His Pa
+    Ride in a Circus Parade With the Circassian Beauties--A Tipsy
+    Elephant Lands Them in a Public Fountain--Pa Makes the Acquaintance
+    of John L. Sullivan.
+
+
+I am learning more about animals every day, and when the season is over
+I will be an expert animal man. Animals naturally have a language of
+their own, and lions understand each other, and bears can converse with
+bears, but in a show, all animals seem to have a common language, so
+they understand each other a little.
+
+I found that out when I put a paper of cayenne pepper into a head of
+lettuce and gave it to the sacred cow. She chewed the lettuce as
+peacefully as could be, and swallowed the cayenne pepper, and then
+stopped to think. You could tell by the expression on her face that when
+the pepper began to heat her up inside she wanted to swear, although she
+was a sacred cow. She humped herself, and shivered, and then bellowed
+like a calf who has been left in the barn to be weaned, while its mother
+goes out to pasture, and the sacred bull, her husband, he came and put
+his nose up to her nose, as much as to say: "What is the matter,
+dearie?" and she talked sacred cattle talk to him for a minute, and then
+the bull turned to me and chased me out of the tent. Now, as sure as you
+live that cow told the bull that I had given her something hot. All the
+animals within hearing were onto me, and they would snarl, and make
+noises when I came along, and act as though they wanted to make me
+understand that they knew I gave that cow a hot box, and they all wanted
+to get a chance at me.
+
+They don't like pa any better than they do me, and the big elephant
+seems to have been laying for pa ever since he run the sharp iron into
+him, the time he got on a tear and tried to run a town. When the
+elephants are performing in the ring, they all have an eye on pa, so
+everybody notices it. I knew something would happen to pa, so when the
+man who plays the sheik, and rides the elephant in the street parade, in
+a howdah, with a canopy over it, with some female houris in it, and they
+called for a volunteer to do the sheik act, at Steubenville, and pa
+offered to do the stunt, I went along as an Egyptian girl, 'cause I knew
+there would be something doing.
+
+The elephant eyed pa when he got up into the bungalow on top of him with
+the Circassian woman and me, and winked at the other elephants, as much
+as to say: "Watch my smoke." As he went out from the lot, on the way
+downtown, ahead of the bunch, all the other animals acted peculiar, and
+seemed to say: "He will get his before we get through this parade."
+
+The big elephant is one of the best ring performers, but he has always
+been steady in the street parade, with the light of Asia on his back. We
+got to the edge of town and stopped to let the rear wagons close up, and
+were in front of a saloon, where the bartender had been emptying stale
+beer out of the bottoms of kegs into a washtub, which was standing on
+the sidewalk, ready to be sold to people who buy it in pails.
+
+Well, sir, that confounded elephant got his trunk in that tub of stale
+beer, and he never took it out till the beer was all gone. I looked down
+from the pagoda and told pa the elephant was drinking again, and had
+drank a washtub of beer, but pa couldn't say anything, 'cause he was
+doing the Arab sheik act, and had to look dignified, as though he was
+praying to Allah.
+
+But just then the band struck up, and we started down the main street of
+Steubenville. The people began to cheer, 'cause our elephant began to
+hippity-hop, and waltz sideways across the street and back again, and I
+thought pa would die. In the parade one man on a horse attends to the
+elephants, so the sheiks don't have anything to say, and pa remained
+like a statue, and told me and the Circassian beauties to be calm, and
+trust in him and Allah. This Allah business was all right when the
+elephant waltzed, but when we got to the next block the beast began to
+stand on his hind feet, and pa and the houris rolled to the back end of
+the howdah, and were all piled in a heap, while I held on to the cloth
+of gold over the elephant's head.
+
+Pa yelled to the people on horseback to kill the elephant, and the crowd
+cheered, thinking it was the best performance they ever saw in a free
+street parade, and the animals in the cages behind were yapping as
+though they knew what was going on. The elephant got down on all fours,
+and we straightened up in the pagoda, and for a block or so the beast
+only waltzed around. As we got to some sort of a public square, where
+there were thousands of people, the stale beer seemed to be getting in
+its work, for the elephant looked at the people, as much as to say: "Now
+I will show you something not down on the bills," and, by ginger, if he
+didn't raise up his hind quarters and stand on his front feet, right by
+the side of a big fountain, and he reached in his trunk for a drink,
+when all of us on the pagoda clung to pa, and we all slid right off into
+the big basin of water. The fountain played on us, and pa was under
+water, with the four Circassian beauties, and when we rolled or slid
+down over the elephant's head, he looked at us and seemed to chuckle:
+"What you getting off here for, the show ain't half out."
+
+Well, the parade went on and left the elephant and the rest of us at the
+fountain, and to show that animals understand each other, and can
+appreciate a joke, every animal that passed us gave us the laugh, even
+the hippopotamus, which opened his mouth as big as a tunnel, and showed
+his teeth and acted as though he would like to exchange tanks with us.
+
+The circus people that could be spared from the wagons came to help us,
+and the citizens helped out the Circassian beauties who were praying to
+Allah, and wringing out their clothes, and I crawled up on the neck of a
+cast-iron swan in the fountain. Pa yelled and talked profane, and told
+'em to bring a cannon and kill the elephant, which kept ducking him with
+his trunk, and swabbing out the bottom of the fountain basin with pa. It
+seemed as though he never would get through using pa for a mop, but
+finally the people got a rope around pa, and a keeper got an iron hook
+in the elephant's ear, and they pulled pa out on one side, and got the
+elephant away on the other side, and just then the callipoe, that ends
+the parade, came by us and played the "Blue Danube," and the elephant
+got on his hind feet and waltzed on the pavement. They put pa and the
+Circassian beauties in a patrol wagon and took them to the show lot, and
+I sat by the driver, and he let me drive the team.
+
+[Illustration: The Elephant Kept Ducking Pa and Swabbing Out the Bottom
+of the Fountain.]
+
+Pa had his sheik clothes rolled up around his waist, and was wringing
+them out, and talking awful sassy, and when we got to the lot it took a
+long time to convince the policemen that we were not guilty of
+disorderly conduct, and just then the elephant came tearing by us, with
+the keeper on horseback behind him, prodding him in the ham every jump
+with a sharp iron, and he went through the side of the tent as though he
+was mighty sorry he didn't kill us all.
+
+They made him get down on his knees and bellow in token of surrender,
+and then we all went and changed our clothes for the afternoon
+performance. As we passed through the menagerie tent, dripping, every
+animal set up a yell, as much as to say: "There, maybe you will give
+cayenne pepper to a pious sacred cow again, confound you," and that
+convinces me that animals are human.
+
+The last week has been the hardest on pa of any week since we have been
+out with the circus. The trouble with pa is that he wants to be "Johnny
+on the spot," as the boys say, and if anything breaks he volunteers to
+go to work and fix it, and if anybody is sick or disabled, he wants to
+take their place, as he says so he will learn everything about the
+circus, and be competent to run a show alone next year.
+
+But it was a mean trick the principal owner of the show played on pa at
+Canton, O. You see John L. Sullivan used to do a boxing act with this
+show, years ago, and everybody likes John, and when he shows up where
+the show gives a performance he has the freedom of the whole place, and
+everybody about the show is ready to fall over themselves to do John L.
+a service.
+
+Well, Sullivan showed up at Canton, and he went everywhere, all the
+forenoon, and met all the old timers, and at the afternoon performance
+he was awfully jolly.
+
+John was standing beside the ring when the Japanese jugglers were
+juggling, and he leaned against a pole. Pa came in from the menagerie
+tent, and he didn't know Sullivan, and when he saw Sullivan holding the
+pole up, pa said to the boss proprietor that the fat man who was
+interfering with the show ought to be called down or put out.
+
+The boss said to pa: "You go take him by the ear and put him out," and
+pa, who is as brave as lion, started for Sullivan, and the boss winked
+at the other circus men, and pa went up to Sullivan and took hold of
+John's neck with both hands, and said: "Come on out of here."
+
+Well, sir, we ought to have moving pictures of what followed. Sullivan
+turned on pa, and growled just like a lion. Then he took pa around the
+waist and held him up under his arm, and picked up a piece of board and
+slatted pa just as though pa was a child, and the audience just yelled,
+and pa called to the circus men for help, but they just laughed.
+
+[Illustration: John L. Slatted Pa Just as Though He Was a Child.]
+
+Pa got a chance at the fat man and he hit him in the jaw, but it did not
+hurt Sullivan, only made him mad. He took pa up by the collar and
+whirled him around until pa was dizzy, and then he started with him for
+the menagerie tent, and called to the boss canvasman: "Bill, come on and
+tell me which is the hungriest lion, and I will feed him with this cold
+meat."
+
+Pa yelled, 'cause he thought he was in the hands of an escaped lunatic,
+and the circus hands came and took him away. Then the owner told pa who
+Sullivan was, and pa almost fainted. But finally, after breathing hard
+for awhile, pa went up to Sullivan and shook his hand, and said: "Mr.
+Sullivan, you must excuse me. If I had known you were the great John L.,
+I would not have licked you." Sullivan looked at pa and said: "Well, you
+are a wonder, old man, and you did do me up," and pa and Sullivan became
+great friends. Since then pa is pretty chesty, 'cause the circus men
+point him out to the jays as the man who whipped John L. Sullivan.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy and His Pa Drive a Roman Chariot--They Win the Race, but
+    Meet With Difficulties--The Bearded Lady to the Rescue--A Farmer's
+    Cart Breaks Up the Circus Procession.
+
+
+Ohio was a hoodoo for the circus business, and Kentucky got the whole
+bunch ready for a long stay at Dwight, Ill., but the agent routed us
+into Pennsylvania, and pa has had nothing but a series of disasters
+since striking the state.
+
+Pa gave notice that when we got to his old home, at Scranton, where he
+lived when he was a boy, he wanted to sort of run things, so his old
+neighbors would see that he had got up in the world since he left the
+old town. So the manager gave pa about 400 free tickets to distribute
+among his friends, and arranged for pa to show off as the leading
+citizen in the show. He was offered a chance to take the place of the
+clown, the ring master or anybody whose duty he thought he could
+perform. Pa selected the place of driver of the Roman chariot with four
+horses abreast, in place of the Irish Roman who was accustomed to drive
+the chariot in the race with the female charioteer, a muscular girl who
+used to clerk in a livery stable at Chicago.
+
+The chariot race is a fake, because it is arranged for the girl to win,
+so the audience will go wild and cheer her, so she has to come bowing
+all around the ring. The way the job is put up is for the two chariots
+to start, and go around twice. On the first turn the man driver is
+ahead, and takes the pole, and on the second turn the girl's ahead, and
+she takes the pole, and on the third turn the man is ahead, and they
+begin to whip the horses, who seem crazy, and on the last stretch the
+man holds his team back a little, and the girl passes him and comes out
+a trifle ahead, and the crowd goes wild.
+
+Well, the master of ceremonies coached pa about the business, and told
+him what to do. They knew he could drive four horses, because he said he
+was an old stage driver, and when he got in the chariot with the Roman
+suit on gleaming with gold, and the brass helmet, and the cloth of gold
+gauntlets, and stood up like a senator, gee, I was proud of him, and
+when he and the female drove out of the dressing-room and halted by the
+door for the announcer to announce the great Ben Hur chariot race, I got
+into the chariot behind pa, and told him he must win the race, or the
+people of Scranton would mob him. For they knew these races were usually
+fixed beforehand, but since he was to drive one of the teams, all his
+friends were betting on him, and if he pulled the team and let that
+livery stable lady win the race, they would accuse him of giving free
+tickets to get them in the show and skin them out of their money.
+
+Pa said to me: "This race is going to be on the square, and you watch my
+smoke. Do you think I would let that red-headed dish washer beat me? Not
+on your life."
+
+The play is to have a little boy kiss the male driver good-by, and a
+little girl kiss the female driver good-by, as though they were taking
+their lives in their hands. I had climbed up to pa and put my arms
+around his neck, and kissed him, and a girl kissed the female, when the
+gong sounded, and both four-horse teams made a jump, before I could get
+out of the chariot, so I got right in front of pa and peeked over the
+dashboard of the chariot, and, gee, but didn't we fairly whizz by the
+poles, and the audience looked like a panorama.
+
+Pa got the pole and kept it, and we went around three times, and found
+the female chariot ahead of us, cause pa had gone around twice to her
+once. She turned out a little right by the band-stand, and pa run his
+team right inside her chariot and caught her wheel, and when he yelled
+to his team, her cart, team, and all were thrown right into the band,
+which scattered over the backs of the seats. The horses were all mixed
+up with the instruments, and the female driver was thrown into the air
+and came down in a sitting position right into the bass drum. She went
+right through the sheepskin, so her head and hands and feet were all of
+her that remained outside the drum.
+
+[Illustration: Her Cart, Team and All Were Thrown Right Against the
+Band.]
+
+She yelled for help and the circus hands rolled the drum, with her in
+it, into the dressing-room, where they had to cut the sides of the drum
+with an ax, to get her out, while others caught her horses and pulled
+the chariot out of the band, and the music stopped; but pa went on
+forever.
+
+He went around six times yelling like an Indian at a green corn dance,
+and when he thought it was time to let up, because he had missed the
+other chariot, he pulled so hard he broke the lines on the two inside
+horses and then it was a runaway for sure, and the audience stood up on
+the seats and yelled, and women fainted.
+
+Finally the circus hands grabbed some hurdles, and threw them across the
+track, near the main entrance, and when we came around the last time,
+two of the horses jumped the hurdles all right, but two fumbled and fell
+down, and there was a crash, and I didn't know anything until I felt
+cold water on my face that tasted sour, and colored my shirt red, and I
+found the lemonade butcher was bringing me to by pouring a tray of
+lemonade over me.
+
+When my eyes opened, I saw a sight that I shall never forget. It seems
+that when the horses fell down, the chariot and the other two horses and
+pa and I had landed all in a heap right on top of the lemonade and
+peanut concession, and carried it up onto a row of seats near the main
+entrance from the menagerie. The elephants that were to come on next
+were in the door waiting for their signal, and they were scared at the
+crash, and they came in bellowing, the keepers having lost all control
+of them. The audience was stampeding, and the circus men were trying to
+straighten things out.
+
+Pa struck on his head against a wagon wheel and his brass helmet was
+driven down over his face, so when he yelled to be pulled out of the
+helmet his voice sounded like a coon song, coming from a phonograph. It
+was the closest call from death pa ever had, 'cause they had to cut the
+helmet with a can opener to let pa out, like you open a can of lobsters.
+When they got the helmet opened so pa could come out, he looked just
+like a boiled lobster, and when the chief owner of the circus came up on
+a run, and asked if pa was dead, pa said: "Not much, Mary Ann; did I
+win?" and the manager said it was a pity they ever opened that helmet
+and let pa out. The man told pa he won in a walk, but the chief of
+police of Scranton was going to arrest pa for exceeding the speed limit.
+
+[Illustration: Pa Struck on His Head Against a Wagon Wheel.]
+
+They took pa to the dressing-room on a piece of board, and when the
+woman driver saw him, she got an ax, and wanted to cleave him from head
+to foot, but the bearded woman stepped in front of her and said: "Not on
+your life," and she shielded pa from death with her manly form, which pa
+says he shall never forget. Pa's old friends in Scranton gave him a
+banquet that night, but pa couldn't eat anything, cause the rim of the
+brass helmet cut a gash in his Adam's apple.
+
+After the chariot race the managers concluded they wouldn't let pa have
+any position of importance again very soon, and I made up my mind you
+wouldn't ever catch me in any game that pa was in; but in the circus
+business you can never tell what is going to happen from one day to
+another.
+
+On the train on the way to Wilkes Barre there was a hot box on one of
+the sleepers, and the car was side-tracked all night.
+
+When we arrived at the town about 40 wagon drivers that were in the car
+did not show up, and they had to press everybody that could drive a team
+into the service to haul the stuff to the lot, and pa drove four horses
+so well with a load of tent poles that the manager complimented pa, and
+that gave pa the big head. When the parade was all ready to start
+through town, and the drivers had not arrived, the manager asked pa if
+he thought he could drive the ten gray horses on the band wagon, to lead
+the procession, and pa said driving ten horses was his best hold, and he
+got up on the driver's seat, and called me to get up with him, and I
+hate a boy that will disobey a parent, so I climbed up and began to
+jolly the band about the chariot race, and I told them pa wouldn't do a
+thing to them this time.
+
+The manager of the show always rides ahead of the parade, with the chief
+of police of the town, and the band horses follow him, so it is easy
+enough to drive ten horses, cause all you have to do it to hold on to
+the 20 lines, and look savage at the crowd on the sidewalks, and the
+horses go right along, and the people think the driver is a wonder. So
+when the manager started in his buggy pa pulled up on all the lines he
+could hold on to, which filled his lap, and made him look like a harness
+maker, and he yelled: "Ye-up," and the procession moved, and the ten
+teams pa was driving went along all right, and pa looked as though he
+owned the show and the town.
+
+We got downtown, to a wide street, and there was a fire alarm ahead, or
+something, and the procession stopped, and the manager and chief of
+police disappeared, and there was a wagon load of green corn stalks
+right beside the lead team, which a farmer was taking to a silo, but he
+had stopped his team to see the parade. The three teams of pa's leaders,
+six horses, began to eat the corn stalks, and the camels, that were
+behind us, worked along up by the band wagon and began to eat, and the
+farmer got scared to see his corn stalks disappearing, so he drove off
+on a side street, and started for the silo, and by ginger, pa's team
+turned onto the side street and followed the wagon of corn stalks, and
+pa couldn't hold them, and the band played, "In the Good Old Summer
+Time, There Will Be a Hot Time in the Old Town."
+
+The camels kept up with the farmer's wagon, too, and the whole parade
+followed the band. The farmer started his horses into a run, and the
+team of ten horses that was driving pa started to galloping, and I
+looked back, and the elephants were beginning to gallop, and all the
+cages were coming whooping, and it was a picnic. The band stopped
+playing, and the players were scared, and as we were crossing a little
+bridge over a small stream, on the edge of town, I turned around to the
+band and told them to jump for their lives, and they all made a jump for
+the stream, and the air was full of uniforms and instruments, and they
+landed in the stream all right.
+
+We went on up a hill, and were in the country, and the farmer turned
+into a farmyard, and the band wagon followed, and the farmer jumped off
+the corn stalk wagon and rushed for the house, and pa's ten-horse team
+surrounded the wagon, and every horse was eating corn stalks, and the
+team was all mixed up. The camels and the elephants crowded in for the
+nice green lunch, and the farmer's wife came out with her apron waving,
+and said "Shoo," but none of the animals shooed worth a cent, and pa
+pulled on the lines, and yelled, while the rest of the parade came into
+the farm and lined up. The drivers yelled at pa to know where in thunder
+he was going, and pa said: "Damfino."
+
+Just then the manager and chief of police came up, and the way they
+talked to pa was awful. Pa couldn't explain how it was that he took the
+parade out in the country, and you never saw such a time.
+
+By this time the regular drivers had arrived on a special, from where we
+left them with a hot box, and they took possession of the teams, and we
+got back to the circus lot in time for the afternoon performance. I
+don't know what they are doing to pa, but they had him in the manager's
+tent all the afternoon with some doctors, who seem to be examining him
+for insanity.
+
+Everybody about the show thinks pa has hoodooed the aggregation, but pa
+says such things are always happening, and it is wrong to blame him.
+
+The farmer got paid for his corn stalks, and it is to be charged up to
+pa.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy and His Pa in a Railroad Wreck--Pa Rescues the "Other
+    Freaks"--They Spend the Night on a Meadow--A Near-Sighted Claim
+    Agent Settles for Damages--Pa Plays Deaf and Dumb and Gets Ten
+    Thousand.
+
+
+It has come at last.
+
+Everybody about the show expects that the show has got to have a
+railroad wreck every season, and all hands lay awake nights on the cars
+to brace themselves for the shock. Sometimes it comes early in the
+season, and again a show goes along until almost the end of the season
+without a shake-up, and fellows think maybe there is not going to be any
+wreck, but the engineers are only waiting till everybody has forgotten
+about it, and then, biff, bang, and they have run into another train, or
+been run into, and you have to be pulled out of a window by the heels,
+and laid out in a marsh until the claim agents can settle with you.
+
+I always thought in reading of railroad accidents, that the railroad
+sent out a special trainload of doctors and nurses, to care for the
+injured, but the special train never has a doctor until the lawyers give
+first aid to the wounded in the way of financial poultices for the
+cripples. People in our business are on the railroads, and we work them
+for all there is in it; and the man that is hurt the least makes the
+biggest howl, and gets the biggest slice of indemnity. Some circus
+people spend all their salary as they go along, and live all winter on
+the damages they get from the railroads when the wreck comes.
+
+The night of the wreck our train was whooping along at about 90 miles an
+hour, on a hippity-hop railroad in Pennsylvania, and the night was hot,
+and the mosquitoes from across the line in New Jersey were singing their
+solemn tunes, and pa, who attended a lodge meeting that night at the
+town we showed in, was asleep and talking in his sleep about passwords
+and grips, and the freaks and trapeze performers in our car had got
+through kicking about how the show was running into the ground, when
+suddenly there was a terrific smash-up ahead, an engine boiler exploded,
+a freight car of dynamite on a side track exploded and there was a
+grinding and bumping of cars. Then they rolled down a bank, over and
+over, so the upper berth was the lower berth half the time, and finally
+the whole business stopped in a hay marsh, and the bilge water in the
+marsh leaked into the hold of our car; people screamed, and some one
+yelled "fire!" and I pulled on pa till he woke up.
+
+I thought pa's head was all caved in, because he talked nutty. The first
+thing he said was: "Say I, pronounce your name, and repeat after me,"
+and then he said: "I promise and swear that I will never reveal the
+secrets of this degree," and then the conductor pulled pa's leg and
+said: "Crawl out of the window, old man, 'cause the train is in the
+ditch, the car is afire, and if you don't get out in about a minute with
+the other freaks, you will be a burnt offering."
+
+Pa said you couldn't fool him, 'cause he knew he was being initiated
+into the 20-steenth degree of the Masons, and he guessed he could tell a
+degree from a train wreck, 'cause the degree was a darn sight worse than
+a wreck, but the conductor took one of those long glass fire
+extinguishers and sprinkled the medicated water on the freaks in the
+next berth, and then turned it on pa, and pa tasted it, and thought he
+was at a banquet, and he said "that sauterne is not fit to drink."
+
+Then when the bearded woman yelled that the fire had almost reached her
+whiskers, and would nobody save her, pa began to get ready to move on,
+'cause he concluded he hadn't been riding a goat after all, and he told
+me to hand him his pants. Pa is a man that will never go out among
+people, no matter how dark the night is, without his pants, and I admire
+him for it. Some of the circus men didn't care for dress that night, but
+got out just as they were, and the result was that when daylight came
+they had to tie hay around their legs.
+
+Our car was bottom-side up, but I found pa's pants and he got his legs
+in, and I buttoned him in, but I felt all the time as though I had
+buttoned them in the back, so the seat was in front, but the fire was
+crackling and pa pushed me out of a transom, and then he crawled out,
+and we sat down in the mud.
+
+The bearded woman came next, with her whiskers done up in curl papers,
+and then the fat woman got one foot through the transom, and she
+couldn't get it back in, and the train hands got an ax and were going to
+cut her leg off, and save one foot, at least, when pa got a move on him,
+and took the ax and broke out the side of the car, and got her out.
+Eight or nine men lifted her tenderly onto a stack of hay, and she
+wrapped it around her, 'cause she left her clothes in her berth.
+
+[Illustration: Pa Got an Ax and Cut the Fat Woman Out.]
+
+Well, it was a sight when the people were got out of our car, and they
+let it burn, to light up the scene, and pa and I and the boss canvasman
+went along the ditched train, and helped people out. The giant was in
+two upper berths, and he got one leg out of the transom over one berth,
+and one leg out of the transom over the other berth, and we pulled his
+legs, but he couldn't make it, so pa took an ax and made both berths
+into one, and got him out.
+
+The giant shook himself and started on a run across the marsh, but he
+mired up to his neck, and a farmer who heard the noise came to order us
+off his hay field for trespass, and yelled: "Here's a head of some of
+your performers cut off away over here," and he was going to bring it
+in, when the farmer found the head was alive, and he ran away from it.
+
+In an hour we had everybody out, and made beds for them by spreading out
+hay cocks, and nobody seemed to be hurt so very much. We heard a
+locomotive whistle up the road, and some one said the relief train was
+coming with doctors and nurses, but the show owner who was with us said:
+"Relief doctors, nothing. That is a train-load of lawyers and claim
+agents to settle with us. The doctors will not come till to-morrow. Now,
+everybody pretend to be hurt awful bad, and strike the sharks for
+$10,000 apiece, and come down to $100, if you can't do any better."
+
+It was getting daylight, and the relief train stopped, and the good
+Samaritans came wading into the hay marsh, bent on settling with us
+cheap. The first lawyer asked the principal owner how many were killed,
+'cause they could figure exactly how much they have to pay for a dead
+one, but the live ones are the ones that make trouble for a railroad,
+'cause they can kick and argue. The boss said nobody was dead, but the
+giant, who was mired in out of sight. The giant heard what was said, and
+he yelled that he was alive, and wouldn't settle for less than $20,000,
+but the claim agent said the giant would be dead in 15 minutes in that
+quicksand, so he would let him sink, and pay for him as a dead one.
+
+The giant said if they would pull him out of the mud he would settle for
+$100, and they pulled him out, and the rest of the injured were going to
+mob him for settling so cheap.
+
+One of the claim agents found the bearded woman sitting on a hay cock,
+combing out her whiskers, and asked what it would take to settle, and
+she said $10,000, and she got up and walked over to another hay cock
+where the Circassian beauty was drying her hair, and the claim agent
+looked at how spry the bearded woman walked, and he said to the boss: "I
+won't give that fellow with the curly whiskers a single kopeck," and the
+bearded woman came back and swatted the claim agent for calling her a
+fellow. So they compromised on $200, and she went behind the haystack
+and put it in her stocking, which convinced the claim agent that she
+wasn't a man.
+
+A near-sighted claim agent came to the haystack where the fat woman was,
+and the boss told her now was her time to have a mess of hysterics, so
+she set up a cry that scared the agent, who thought there were at least
+six women on the haystack, and he said: "What will all of you people up
+there on the haystack settle for in a lump, for I am in a hurry?"
+
+The fat woman caught on at once, and said: "We will all settle for
+$10,000." Then she yelled, and the agent thought her back was broke, and
+he offered $7,500, and she cried and said: "Make it $10,000," and the
+agent said: "I will go you," and he made out a check, and the fat woman
+had some more hysterics.
+
+I had watched the settling all around, and I told pa to be deaf and dumb
+when they came to him, and just point to the seat of his pants in front
+and buttoned up behind, and look as though he was suffering the tortures
+of the inquisition, and let me do the talking, and I would make the old
+railroad go into a receiver's hands.
+
+So pa said: "You are the boss," and he looked so pitiful that I almost
+cried.
+
+When the near-sighted claim agent came to pa, I told him that pa's last
+words were to beg to be shot, and the man looked at pa's pants, and then
+at his face, and said: "What hit him? That's the worst case I ever saw
+in a railroad wreck."
+
+[Illustration: "What Hit Him? That's the Worst Case I Ever Saw!"]
+
+I put my handkerchief to my eyes and said: "Well, when the shock came,
+pa was all right, as handsome a man as you would often see. I think
+there must have been a pile driver on the train that struck him, and
+changed sides with him, knocking his stomach around on the back side of
+him, and placing his spinal column around in front of him, where his
+stomach was, and causing him to lose the sense of speech. Think of a
+middle-aged man going through life mixed up in that manner, having to
+sit down on his stomach, and having his backbone staring him in the
+face. How does he know when he takes food in his mouth that it can
+corkscrew around under his arm and eventually find his stomach? How a
+man can be ground and twisted, and mauled, and stamped on by a reckless
+locomotive with a crazy engineer and a drunken fireman, rolled over by
+box cars, and walked on by elephants, and still live, is beyond me. As
+he told me before he lost the power of speech, not to be too hard on the
+railroad company, though some railroads would be glad to pay him
+$20,000, and no questions asked, he begged me, as heir to his estate, to
+let you off for a paltry $10,000."
+
+Pa made up the darndest face, and groaned. The agent called another
+agent, and they whispered together, and finally the first one came to me
+and asked pa's full name, and then the two of them got out a fountain
+pen, and they made out a check, and he said: "This is the first case in
+the history of railroad wrecking that the agent has not had the heart to
+try to beat the injured party down. This is certainly the most pitiful
+case that has ever been known, and if your father ever comes to his
+senses you can tell him he is welcome to the money."
+
+The agents shook hands with pa and I, and went away to their train, and
+pa winked at me, and a wrecking train came and we got on a special, and
+got to Pittsburg before breakfast, and pa is going to buy me a dog out
+of the money.
+
+Gee, but there is all kinds of money in the circus business. Pa is going
+to wear his pants hind side before until we get out of Pittsburg.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy Causes Trouble Between the Russian Cossacks and the Jap
+    Jugglers--A Jap Tight-Rope Walker Jiu-Jitsu's Pa--The Animals Go on
+    a Strike--Pa Runs the Menagerie for a Day and Wins Their Gratitude.
+
+
+I did not mean any harm when I told the Japanese jugglers that they
+ought to kick against having those Russian cavalrymen in the show, the
+fellows who ride horses standing up, in the wild-west department, 'cause
+I had listened to their Russian talk, and it seemed to me they were
+spies who were looking for a chance to do injury to the "poor little
+Japs." I could see that I made the Japs mad the first thing, and then I
+told them that pa and all the managers of the show felt sorry for the
+little Japs, 'cause some day the big Russians would ride right over
+them, and kill them right in the ring. I said that everybody thought the
+Japs ought to resign from the show, for fear of a clash with the
+Russians, or else they ought to have some grown persons to act as
+chaperones.
+
+You ought to have seen the look of scorn on the faces of the Jap
+jugglers when the interpreter told them that the circus people were
+afraid the Russians would hurt them. They jabbered awhile, and then the
+interpreter told me that the ten little Japs could whip the 20 Russians
+in four minutes. Probably it was none of my business, and I never ought
+to have repeated it, but in a circus everybody wants to know everything
+that is going on, so when the big leader of the Russians asked me what
+those brown monkeys were talking about, I told him: "Nothing particular,
+only they say the ten of them could lick you 20 Russians in four
+minutes."
+
+Gee, didn't that Russian talk kopec and damski, and froth at the mouth.
+Then he called his Russians together, and the talk sounded as though a
+soda fountain had burst. Then they all yelled: "Killovitch the
+monkey-ouskis."
+
+[Illustration: "Gee, But Didn't That Russian Talk Kopec and Damski."]
+
+I went and told pa there was going to be a riot between the Jap jugglers
+and the Russian horsemen, and probably the fight would take place when
+the Japs came out of the ring at the afternoon performance, and the
+Russians went in, right near the dressing-room. I asked pa not to mix in
+it, but keep away in the animal tent. Pa said, not much, he wouldn't be
+away, and he told all the managers, and they all got around the
+dressing-room to stop the muss, if one started.
+
+Well, to show how the Japs were organized, as soon as they felt there
+was going to be a row, they kept their eyes on the Russians all the time
+they were in the ring doing their pole balancing, and the little Jap up
+on the bamboo pole, with a fan, kept jabbering to the fellows down on
+the ground, and I could see that trouble was coming. When their act was
+over the Japs bowed to the audience, and started out where the Russians
+were lined up to come riding in. The big Russian said: "Look at the
+little monkeys," but he hadn't got the words out of his mouth before the
+Japs turned, and every man grabbed the tail of every other horse, and
+jumped up behind the Russians, and each of the ten Japs took a Russian
+by the neck with a jiu jitsu strangle hold, and reached out his leg and
+wound it around the Russian on the next horse, and in ten seconds they
+had unhorsed the 20 Russians. The whole 30 men were on the ground
+rolling in the sawdust, the Japs rolling over and under the Russians,
+twisting their legs and arms in an unknown manner, and making them yell
+for help like a mastiff that has trifled in an overbearing manner with a
+little bulldog, until the bulldog got mad and began the chewing act on
+the mastiff's fore leg.
+
+It was the worst mix-up ever was and the managers told pa to put a stop
+to it, and pa pulled off his coat and grabbed the first Jap he could dig
+out, and began to pull him, like you would take hold of the leg of a dog
+in a fight.
+
+Pa said: "Here, quit this foolishness, 'cause there is an armistice, and
+the war is over, anyway."
+
+O! O! but the Jap didn't do a thing to pa. He grabbed pa by the wrist,
+and he seemed to be having an epileptic fit, and pa's leg shot out so
+his feet hit a guy pole, and then the Jap pulled him back like he was a
+rubber ball on a string, and then he took pa by the elbow and held him
+out at arm's length, and then swung him around a few times and let go of
+him, and he fell down among the reserved seats which representatives of
+the press occupy. Pa stood on one ear on a crushed chair, with his legs
+over the railing, and when he came to, the newspaper men wanted to
+interview pa. Pa said all he remembered was that the air ship was
+sailing over the town, and they threw him out for ballast, and he struck
+a church spire and bounded onto a warehouse filled with dynamite, which
+exploded when he struck it, and the neighbors picked his remains up on a
+dustpan and emptied them in here, Then he asked if his head was on
+straight, and the circusmen took him away to the hospital tent.
+
+[Illustration: "O, But the Jap Didn't Do a Thing to Pa!"]
+
+The circus hands separated the Russians and Japs, or at least pulled off
+the Japs, and the Russians limped to the dressing-room, and their act
+was cut out. Unless the terms of peace between Japan and Russia include
+the belligerents in our show, there will be rows every day.
+
+Pa came to the car on crutches that night just before the train pulled
+out for Philadelphia, and wanted to know where I was during the fight.
+He said he rushed right in and grabbed a Jap in one hand and a Russian
+in the other, and bumped their heads together, and threw one of them
+towards the ring, and the other up among the seats, and he wanted to
+know if I thought he killed either or both of them.
+
+I hate a boy that will deceive his father, but I told him there was talk
+about two performers, one a Russian and the other a Jap, that were left
+at the morgue, but I didn't know anything sure about it, and pa said: "I
+was afraid I should hurt them, but they brought it on themselves by
+breaking the rules of the show against fighting during a performance,"
+and pa rolled over and groaned in his berth, and went to sleep and
+snored so the freaks wanted to have a nose bag, such as horses eat out
+of, pulled over pa's face.
+
+The queerest thing that ever happened in the circus business in this
+country took place at Germantown, Pa. The teamsters went on a strike at
+Pittsburg, for increase in wages and shorter hours, and for two days the
+management had a great time.
+
+We had to get drays to haul the stuff from the train to the lot, and
+then our teamsters got the local draymen to join them, and when we got
+ready to haul the stuff back to the train nobody would do any work, and
+the walking delegates from the Teamsters' union just took possession of
+the show, and we were stuck, like an automobile when the gasoline gives
+out.
+
+We had got to looking at the teamsters as of no particular account when
+they walked out, but when they wouldn't work, they became the most
+important part of the show, and after the show was over the managers who
+had told the striking teamsters to go plumb, found that they had gone
+plumb, and they had to rush all over Pittsburg and find them, and grant
+their demands, and get them to go to work.
+
+Pa was sent out to find a bunch of them, and it cost pa over $30 to get
+them out of a beer garden, and back to the lot, and it was almost
+daylight before we got our train started for the next town.
+
+Well, at the next town we could see there was something the matter with
+the animals. They acted as though they had lost all interest in the
+success of the show, and wouldn't do any of their stunts worth a cent.
+The elephants went through their act carelessly, and when they were
+scolded or prodded with the iron hook, they got mad and wanted to fight,
+and when they got back from the ring to the animal tent they wouldn't
+eat the baled hay but threw it all over the tent, and acted riotous.
+
+The kangaroos would not do their boxing act, the horses kicked at their
+hay, and wouldn't eat their oats, the camels growled at their food, and
+scared the people who passed by where they were tied to stakes, the
+sacred cattle got their backs up and acted as though they, being pious,
+couldn't swear, but would like to hire the hyenas to swear for them; the
+giraffes laid down and curled their necks so they were no attraction to
+the show, 'cause a giraffe is no curiosity unless he stretches himself
+away up towards the top of the tent. The zebras rolled in the mud and
+spoiled their stripes, so people couldn't tell them from common mules;
+the grizzly bear walked his cage, and kept giving vent to bear language,
+and the big lion was howling all the time.
+
+The show was a failure at that town, and when we loaded the train the
+managers held a meeting in our car to decide what in thunder was the
+matter with the animals. All kinds of theories were advanced, such as
+poison, malaria from Indiana, and pure cussedness. After they had
+discussed the matter awhile, pa came in, and they asked him what he
+thought about it, and that tickled pa, 'cause as foolish as he looks, he
+helps the show out of lots of bad holes. Pa lit a cigar and put it in
+one side of his mouth, put his hat up on one side of his head, like he
+was tough, and looked wise, and said:
+
+"Fellow fakirs, I have been watching the animals all day, and while I do
+not say they understand enough of the ways of human beings to be posted
+on labor unions, and all that, I want to tell you they are on a strike,
+and that grizzly and that lion are the walking delegates that are
+stirring them up to mischief. They may not know anything about the
+teamsters' strike, but they know something has happened, and they are
+displeased at something, and they have lost respect for the employer.
+They are on a strike, and the very devil is going to pay to-morrow,
+unless the cause of the dissatisfaction is discovered, mutual
+concessions made, and arbitration resorted to.
+
+"Gentlemen, you hear me," said pa, and he sat down on the edge of the
+arm of the car seat.
+
+They gave pa the laugh, but finally told him to take charge of the
+strike and settle it quick, but they wanted to know what he thought
+animals would be dissatisfied about, as long as they got food enough to
+eat.
+
+Pa said: "I'll tell you. You feed the horses and other hay-eating
+animals on musty baled hay, bought from contractors that may have had it
+on hand for five years. How would you like it if you were served with
+breakfast food that had been stored in a warehouse until it was
+mildewed? A horse or an elephant has feelings. Give them baled hay, and
+when they are trying to pick out a mouthful that is not spoiled, you
+drive along with a load of nice new-mown timothy or alfalfa, and see
+them make a rush for that load of hay, the way my ten-horse team did the
+other day for that load of cornstalks. Then the sacred cattle are hot
+under the collar because of the fellows who use profanity. Can you
+imagine a sacred cow trying to be good, and set a pious example to the
+heathen animals, being patient when they have to listen to swearing? You
+buy meat that is tainted for the lions, who like fresh meat, and the
+jackal, that only loves bad meat, gets the only sirloin in the lot. Let
+me run the menagerie to-morrow, and I will have Mr. Lion, the walking
+delegate, declare this strike off."
+
+Well, they told pa to arbitrate the strike, and the next day he had a
+couple of loads of timothy hay, such as mother used to make, driven in
+and unloaded, and the horses, elephants, camels, and things almost set
+up a cheer for pa. The meat-eating animals were given a picnic of the
+freshest beef, with a little so decayed that it was only fit to be
+buried, for the hyenas and jackals, and every animal was happy. They did
+their turns better than ever, and the sacred cattle almost acted
+devilish.
+
+Now the animals have declared the strike off, and they want to lick pa's
+hand. The owners of the show appreciate genius, and they have raised
+pa's salary and given him full charge of the menagerie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+    The Circus Strikes the Quaker City--They Go on a Ginger Ale Jag--Pa
+    Breaks Up an Indian War Dance and Comes Near Being Burned Alive--The
+    World's Fair Cannibals Have a Roast Dog Feast.
+
+
+Ever since we knew the show was billed for Philadelphia for a Saturday
+and that we should have to stay over Sunday in that town, there has been
+symptoms of a revolt. Everybody connected with the show has a horror of
+being found dead in Philadelphia. They claim it is too dead for live
+people, and not very satisfactory to dead people.
+
+A performer who was with the show last year says that nobody but the
+newspaper people who had free tickets attended the performances, and
+some of them wouldn't go in the tent unless the press agent promised to
+set up a free lunch, with devilish ginger ale to drink, and that the
+press people got riotous on ginger ale. A ginger ale jag is terrible.
+When a man is full of ginger ale his intestines loop the loop, and tie
+up in knots, and gripe like cholera infantum, and unless his friends
+hold him he goes out into the world and wants to kill the women and
+children, and non-combatants.
+
+Last year our press agents filled up the members of the local press with
+ginger ale, and when we struck Philadelphia this time the newspapers had
+sworn out warrants for our show, on the charge of compounding a felony,
+which I suppose is the legal name for ginger ale. The way the Quakers
+patronize a show is to put on their gray clothes, and their big white
+hats and stand on the corners when the parade goes by, and never crack a
+smile, or act interested, and when the parade has passed they go to the
+circus lot and see the balloon ascension, and stand on wagon wheels and
+try to look over the side of the tent at the performance, and then they
+kick because the audience on the back seats cut off their view from the
+wagon wheels.
+
+Last year our show killed a Quaker, and the community is down on us. The
+Quaker got in the show because he owned a half inch of ground that its
+tents were on, and he stood right by the ring, and when the champion
+female rider was suspended in the air between two bareback horses, he
+leaned over too far inside the ring, and she kicked his hat clear up to
+the roof of the tent, and a female trapeze performer up there caught it
+and sat down on it on the trapeze. The old Quaker had heart disease and
+fell dead. What the Quakers complained of was that after the Quaker's
+remains had been removed from the ring, that the show went right on.
+They claimed that we ought to have shown proper respect for the dead by
+closing the show for 30 days, and wearing crape on our arms, but a
+circus is not built that way.
+
+Ordinarily it may be quiet enough in Philadelphia on Sunday, but pa
+found that he had more of a run for his money than at any place we have
+been so far. We have had a tribe of Indians with our wild west
+department all summer, and pa has not stood very well with the Indians
+since he was in charge of the show at Fort Wayne, and they all got
+drunk, and he had them tied up to the poles around the ring until they
+got sober. They have laid for pa ever since, and it was only a matter of
+time when they got him. Then at Pittsburg our manager picked up a
+company of cannibals that had got left over from the St. Louis fair, and
+who agreed to perform for their board and clothes, and as they don't
+wear any clothes to speak of, and only eat dog week days, and hope to
+get a human being to roast on Sunday, it seemed a pretty good bargain.
+
+Well, the Indians got permission to hold a green corn dance in a piece
+of woods near the circus lot, and the management got them a wagon load
+of corn, and they had built a fire and were roasting the corn, and
+dancing, and pa didn't know about it, and just after dark the Quaker who
+owned the woods complained to pa, who was on watch Sunday night, that
+his Indians had got off the reservation and were preparing to go on the
+warpath, and he wanted them to get off his premises. Pa said he would go
+right over and drive them back to the tents.
+
+I tried to get pa to let the police go and drive them off, but he said
+he hadn't no time to go and wake up the police, and they wouldn't get
+around anyway before the middle of the week. So pa took a tent stake and
+started for the green corn roast. The Indians were taking turns dancing
+and eating roasted corn, and they had a barrel of beer, and I knew
+enough about Indians to keep away from them when they mix beer with
+green corn, for it has about the same effect as committing suicide with
+carbolic acid.
+
+Pa put his hat on one side of his head and went right into the midst of
+the Indians, and grabbed a chief called "One Ear at a Time," and hit him
+with the tent stake, and knocked him down, and said, "Now, you git."
+Well, sir, that Indian had no more than struck the fire in a sitting
+position, and filled the air with the odor of fried buckskin, before the
+whole tribe jumped on pa, and they kicked him with their moccasins, and
+were going to murder him, while the chief who acted as the burnt
+offering got out of the fire, and sat down in the cold mud to cool
+himself. He held up his hand as a signal of attention, and he called a
+council of war, while the squaws sat on pa to hold him down.
+
+The council of war sentenced pa to be burned at the stake, and they tied
+him to a tree and began to pile sticks around him, and pa told me to go
+to the circus lot and give an alarm, and send the hands to rescue him.
+Gee, but didn't I run though, and yell an alarm big enough for a
+massacre. I told the hands, who were sleeping under the seats, or
+playing cards on the trunks that the Indians were burning pa at the
+stake, and some of the hands said that would serve him right, and the
+fellows that were playing cards said they didn't want to break up the
+game when they were losers, to rescue no baldheaded curmudgeon. I
+thought pa was a goner, sure, 'cause I could hear the Indians yell, and
+I thought I could smell flesh burning. Oh, but I was scared for fear
+they would burn pa alive.
+
+[Illustration: The Indians Tied Pa to a Tree and Began to Pile Sticks
+Around Him.]
+
+Just then the man who had charge of our cannibals, who each had a dog
+that they were looking for a place to roast, came along and I told him
+about the Indians' corn roast, and he ordered the cannibals to go drive
+the Indians away from their fire and roast their dogs. Well, it worked
+like a charm, and the cannibals made a rush for the Indians and drove
+them away just as they had lighted the fire around pa, and we were not a
+minute too soon. After the Indians had skedaddled for the woods, and we
+cut the cords that bound pa, the cannibals went to work and skun the
+dogs, and began to cook them, and pa looked on, until it made him
+squirmish, but he was so tickled at being saved from the Indians, that
+he tried to be a good fellow with the cannibals. I guess it would have
+been all right, only the cannibals got to drinking the Philadelphia
+beer, and then it was all off, cause roast dog wasn't good enough for
+them, and they wanted to roast pa.
+
+First they offered pa dog to eat, but he had swore off on dog, and
+passed on it, and that made the cannibals mad, and they got ready to
+roast pa, and I guess they would have eaten him half cooked, if it
+hadn't been for the performers and freaks who had missed their pet dogs,
+and the circus hands told them the cannibals had just gone to the woods
+with a mess of dogs to roast for a dog feast.
+
+Well, they were just getting a fire around pa, and he was giving the
+grand hailing sign of distress, when the performers, headed by the fat
+woman, whose peeled Mexican dog was lost in the shuffle, came in amongst
+the cannibals, and pa and the other dogs were rescued, in the darnedest
+fight I ever saw. The performers just walked right over the cannibals,
+and mauled them with stakes, and all the dogs that had not been killed
+were pulled away from the heathen, and saved. The fat woman got her dog
+all right, and when pa came up from the stake where they were going to
+burn him, and congratulated her on recovering her dog, she turned on pa
+and accused him of being the leading cannibal, and that he was the one
+who put up the whole job to steal the dogs. She jabbed him with a
+parasol, but pa was innocent.
+
+[Illustration: The Fat Woman Jabbed Pa with Her Parasol.]
+
+The Indians got back to the tent along towards morning, and the
+cannibals went back with us, and we had to feed them on wieners, which
+was the nearest to roast dog we could get for them at that time of
+night.
+
+Pa seems to get it in the neck in this show, 'cause everything that goes
+wrong is laid to him, and if anything goes right, somebody else gets the
+credit, and I think he would resign if it was not for his pride. After
+the trouble about the Indians and the cannibals the manager called pa up
+and reprimanded him for indulging the tribes in their wild orgies, and
+said he couldn't maintain discipline as long as pa mixed up with them
+and encouraged them in such things.
+
+Pa tried to explain that he was the victim instead of being the cause of
+the dog roast, but the manager dismissed pa by telling him not to let it
+occur again. Then to show the inconsistency of the manager, he ordered
+pa to go on ahead of the show to New York, and advertise that the
+cannibals in our show would give an exhibition of roasting and eating a
+human being, and to offer a reward for anybody that would consent to be
+roasted and eaten in public.
+
+Pa has gone to New York to look for somebody who will take the position
+of meat for the cannibals, and he is instructed to spare no expense to
+find such a man. He thinks he may find somebody connected with the Life
+Insurance scandal, who has lost all desire to live any longer, and who
+will gladly go into this "mutual" scheme. I don't know.
+
+This circus business is too much for me, 'cause I am losing friends all
+the time. Even the monkeys have got so they seem to be ashamed to be
+seen talking to me, and when I pass the monkey cage they turn their
+backs on me, as though I did not belong to their set. When a fellow gets
+so low that monkeys feel above him, and throw out sarcastic remarks when
+he goes by, it is time to change your luck some way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+    A Newport Monk Is Added to the Show--The Boy Teaches Him Some "Manly
+    Tricks"--The Tent Blows Down and a Panic Follows--Pa Manages the
+    Animal Act Which Ends in a Novel Manner.
+
+
+We have added to the show the most remarkable animal that ever was--a
+baboon that dresses like a man, and eats at a table, using a knife and
+fork, and a napkin. This baboon has been playing an engagement with the
+Four Hundred at Newport, dining with the crowned heads at that resort,
+but the confounded baboon got to be too human, and he fell in love with
+an heiress, and scared one of the Willie boys that was also in love with
+her. His friends were afraid that the baboon would cut Willie out
+entirely, or get jealous and injure Willie, so the manager of the Four
+Hundred show decided to banish the baboon, and our show sent pa to
+Newport to buy the baboon and bring him to our show at New York.
+
+We had the darndest time getting him away from Newport. Pa couldn't do
+any with him, but he took to me, 'cause he thought I was his long-lost
+brother, and I could do anything with him. We got him in our stateroom
+on the boat, and took his clothes away from him, 'cause he only wears
+his clothes when he is being dined and wined, and we chained him in the
+upper berth. He just raised the very deuce on the way down to New York.
+After pa and I got to sleep that baboon got my clothes, and put them on,
+slipped the chain over his head, jumped through the transom, and went
+into every berth where the transom was open, and chatted with the people
+who occupied the berths. There was an old man and woman from New
+Hampshire in one berth, and when the monk got in their berth and began
+to talk the Newport language, the old man thought it was me, and he
+said: "Now, bub, you go away to your pa."
+
+The monk went out, and got into another berth, and crawled under the
+bunk, and when the woman came in to go to bed, she looked under it to
+see if any man was there. When she saw our baboon she yelled "fire," and
+the officers of the boat pulled him out by the hind leg, and tore my
+pant leg off. Pa and I had to sit up the rest of the night with him, and
+when we landed him with the show at Madison Square Garden we felt
+relieved.
+
+[Illustration: When She Saw the Baboon She Yelled Fire.]
+
+One woman on the boat has followed us ever since to collect damages from
+pa, 'cause his oldest son, the monk, proposed to her. Gee, it seems to
+me a woman ought to know the difference between a baboon and a man, but
+some women will marry anything that wears clothes.
+
+The monk took to me so, Pa said I must teach him everything I could that
+men do, so I thought it would do no harm to teach him to chew tobacco,
+'cause he could already smoke cigarettes, so I borrowed a chew from the
+boss canvasman, a great big chew of black plug tobacco, and the monk
+grabbed it, and chewed it awhile, just before the afternoon performance,
+and swallowed it. I knew that settled the monk, and when the audience
+came along by his cage, and pa was trying to get him to perform, as he
+did at Newport, eating dinner like a man, the monk turned pale, and his
+stomach ached, and he stood on his head, and held his stomach in both
+hands, and kicked the table over. Then he hit pa a swat with his foot,
+and wound his tail around pa's neck, and laid his head on pa's shirt
+bosom, and was seasick.
+
+Pa said: "Well, this beats everything. What did you do to him?"
+
+I told pa I had only been teaching the monk manly tricks, and pa said:
+"Well, you have overdone it." And then the Humane society had pa
+arrested for cruelty to animals. But the monk got over it, and now he
+tries to be a masher, and winks at women, and flirts with them just as
+the men do at Newport.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We thought we were smart when we held up the railroad for damages back
+in Pennsylvania, after the wreck, but we are getting a dose of our own
+medicine. At Poughkeepsie there came up a wind and rainstorm that blew
+the tent down right in the midst of the evening performance, and scared
+everybody half to death. Several people were hit by tent poles and hurt
+some, and it was the wildest scene I ever saw, and people who got out
+alive ran away in the dark, and somebody said the animals had all got
+loose, and some of the people never stopped running till daylight the
+next morning.
+
+Some run into the river, and the ambulances carried the injured to
+hospitals. Pa stampeded with the elephants, and never showed up till
+noon the next day. By that time at least 1,000 people had filed claims
+for damages, and all the lawyers from Albany to New York were on our
+trail.
+
+The managers appointed pa to settle with the injured, and the way he
+argued with those people was a caution. One old woman was killed, and pa
+tried to show her relatives that as she was old and helpless, and more
+or less a burden to the family, they ought to pay the show something for
+getting her off their hands. One tramp had his feet cut off, and pa
+tried to show him how much he would save in shoes the rest of his life,
+and that he was in big luck. We left pa at Poughkeepsie to settle the
+cases, and went on to New York, and we heard the people had lynched him,
+but he showed up in a couple of days with money left. Now all the
+lawyers in New York are after us with claims and they have attached most
+everything, and the show is up against it.
+
+What a difference it makes who wants damages. When we were working the
+railroad for damages, it was a cinch, and like getting money from home,
+but now that the people are working us for damages, for being smashed up
+under our tent, we look upon it as a crime, and tell them it is an act
+of Providence, and that the show is not to blame for a windstorm. But
+the lawyers can't be very pious, for they won't believe in the act of
+Providence racket, and we shall have to cough up all the profits of the
+season.
+
+Since we got settled in New York for a two weeks' stand, in Madison
+Square Garden, we are having the tents repaired, and don't have to put
+up and take down tents, and ride all night on trains. We are all
+stopping at hotels and getting rested, and pa is having a chance to
+shine.
+
+The managers think pa is trying to commit suicide, for he wants to take
+the place of anybody who is sick or drunk, and is the understudy of
+everybody. We got one act that just curdles your blood, a cage in the
+ring, with lions and tigers and leopards, who go through all kinds of
+stunts. One lion rides a horse and jumps through hoops, and lands on the
+back of the horse, and jumps on a staging and lets the horse go around
+the ring, and then jumps on again. The horse is blindfolded, so he don't
+know it is a lion that jumps on his back, but thinks it is a man.
+
+The tigers ride bicycles, and the leopards jump about wherever the
+trainer tells them to; a monkey acts as clown, and a little elephant
+runs a make-believe automobile. That act alone is worth the price of
+admission.
+
+Well, the regular trainer went to Coney Island, and got drunk, and we
+either had to cut out that performance, or give back the money, and the
+manager was wailing about it, 'cause nothing makes a circus man wail
+like giving back good money. Then pa said he would save the day by
+taking charge of the animal act. He said he had watched it every day,
+and knew how to do it, and he could dress up in the clothes of the
+regular trainer, and the animals wouldn't know the difference. Gee, but
+I was scared to have pa try to run that animal show, and I think
+everyone in the show believed it would be pa's finish. I felt like an
+orphan when pa came out of the dressing-room with the trainer's clothes
+on, though pa's stomach was so big you would think a blindfolded horse
+would know pa was no trainer.
+
+Well, pa went in the round cage made of bar iron, and motioned to the
+attendants to send the animals into the cage through the chute from the
+animal quarters. The first to come were two tigers that were to ride
+velocipedes. I trembled for pa when they went in and waved their tails
+and looked at pa as much as to say: "O, we won't do a thing to you."
+They actually looked at each other and winked; but pa motioned to the
+velocipedes, and looked fierce, and when they hesitated about getting
+on, pa said: "You won't, won't you," and he took a club filled with lead
+and started for the biggest tiger. He hesitated a moment, and then he
+jumped on the machine, and the other followed, and they raced around,
+and then pa made them get off and jump hurdles. Finally he motioned to a
+shelf for them to jump up onto, and when they hesitated he kicked one in
+the slats, and hit the other with the club, and they went up on that
+shelf too quick, but they stayed there and snarled at pa, and I was
+afraid they would jump on him when his back was turned.
+
+Then they brought in the blind horse and the lion, and the lion was onto
+pa, and he struck right off. He got up on the pedestal from which he was
+to jump onto the horse's back, but when the horse came around the lion
+wouldn't jump, and pa said: "I'll give you one more chance," and the
+horse went under the lion, and he wouldn't jump. So pa stopped the horse
+and took an iron bar and knocked the lion off onto the floor, and he
+growled at pa, but pa kept mauling him, and finally the lion jumped up
+on the pedestal and seemed to say: "Bring on your horse," and pa started
+the horse, and Mr. Lion made his jumps all right, and the audience
+cheered pa.
+
+[Illustration: Pa Kept Mauling the Lion.]
+
+All the animals went through their stunts all right, but I thought I
+could see they were laying for pa, and I wished he was out of the cage.
+The wind-up came when the lions were seated on benches, and the elephant
+was between them, and the tigers and leopards made a pyramid, and the
+monkey was clawing around pa's legs. The signal was about to be given
+for the animals to return through the chute, when the monkey tackled
+pa's legs like a football player, the elephant pushed pa over, and the
+lions pawed him and snarled, and the tigers took a mouthful out of pa's
+pants, and the leopards snatched his red coat off, and the signal was
+given for them to get out of the cage, and they went out like boys at
+recess, leaving pa in the cage with the blind horse, with not clothes
+enough left on him to wad a gun. He was not even scratched, however, the
+animals having just combined to humiliate pa.
+
+The audience cheered. Pa said "Well, wouldn't that skin you." They threw
+him an overcoat to put on, and he bowed like a hero, and quit the ring
+cage, and was met outside by the whole show management, and
+congratulated on having more nerve than any man alive.
+
+Pa said: "If you will give me a shotgun loaded with bird shot, I will
+make those animals get on their knees at the next performance, and beg
+my pardon. You can discharge your trainer, and I will teach them a lot
+of new stunts."
+
+Say, pa is a wonder, and he has already got old Barnum beat a block.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy Feeds the Menagerie Scotch Snuff--Pa Gets Mauled by the
+    Sneezing Animals--Pa Takes a Midnight Ride on a Mule to Escape
+    Punishment.
+
+
+Well, I s'pose I have done it now and it would not surprise me to be
+killed and fed to wild animals,' The manager of the show was talking to
+pa and me, before we left New York, about the condition of the show. Its
+finances were all balled up on account of settling with people who
+pretended to be injured when the tent blew down at Poughkeepsie, and the
+hands and performers are kicking because we are a month behind on
+salaries, and they get drunk whenever any jay will buy for them.
+Everybody gives passes to everybody that wants to get in the show, so
+the box office man has a sinecure, and people chase us from town to town
+for money for board, and hay and everything.
+
+All through New Jersey we showed to claim agents and creditors, and
+didn't take in money enough to buy meat for the animals. He said the
+animals had all taken cold, and lay around dormant, and didn't take any
+interest in the business, and the manager told pa he must think of
+something to wake the animals up. Pa said he would leave it to me to
+wake 'em up, and get some ginger into them. I told pa if I had five
+dollars to spend I could make every animal jump like a box car. Pa gave
+me the money, and I went and bought five pounds of Scotchsnuff, and
+divided it up into ounce packages, and started during the afternoon
+performance at Wilmington, Del., to wake up the animals.
+
+There is something peculiar about animals, if you try to give them
+anything that they think you want them to take, you can't drive it down
+them with a pile driver, but if you try to hide something where they can
+reach it, they watch you out of one eye, and when you go away they look
+at you as much as to say: "O, you think you are smart, don't you?" Then
+they will go and dig it up, and play with it, and eat it if they want
+to.
+
+I took my first package of snuff to the lion's cage, and he was the
+sickest and most disgusted looking lion you ever saw, acting like a man
+who has taken a severe cold, and wants to kill anybody that looks at
+him. The lion lay on the straw, stretched out full length, paying no
+attention to the crowd that passed his cage, and acting as though he
+wanted a hot whisky and his feet soaked in mustard water. When he was
+not looking I hid the package of snuff under the straw, and rattled the
+straw a little, and he opened his eyes and looked at me as much as to
+say: "You can't fool old Shadrack, for I am onto you." I walked away
+behind the hyena cage, and Mr. Lion got up and stretched himself, and
+walked to the place where I put the paper of snuff, put his foot on it
+and broke the paper, and then he put his nose down and sniffed a sniff
+that drew the whole of the snuff up into his nose and lungs, and insides
+generally.
+
+Gee, but you never saw such a change in a lion. The crowd of visitors
+were right near his cage, when he sniffed, and when he got the snuff
+into him, he began to heave his sides like a man who is preparing to
+sneeze, caught his breath a few times, and let out a sneeze that sounded
+like the explosion of an automobile tire. It threw cut feed all over the
+audience, and everybody ran away yelling that the lion busted.
+
+He kept on sneezing, and looking so astounded, as though he couldn't
+make out what had got into him. Pa heard the commotion and came running
+up to the cage to find out what ailed the lion. After I had gone around
+to the other cages and put snuff in all of them, I came up to the lion's
+cage. The lion had stopped sneezing and was roaring and jumping up and
+down, with his mouth open, trying to catch his breath, like a man who
+has taken too big a dose of fresh horse-radish.
+
+Pa said: "What have you been doing to Shadrack?"
+
+I told pa I had woke Shadrack up, and that in about a minute he would
+find that the whole animal kingdom had got a bellyful, and would join in
+the chorus.
+
+Pa tried to soothe the lion by going up to the cage and stroking his
+mane, but the lion looked cross-eyed and stopped prancing and gave a
+sneeze right at pa, which blew pa clear across the tent to where the
+sacred cow had just got hers. When the stuff began to work on that cow
+it was simply scandalous, 'cause she bellowed and cried and sneezed all
+at once, and pawed pa. He got up and told me I was overdoing this waking
+up act on the animals.
+
+By that time the cage of hyenas began to sneeze a quartette, and fight
+each other, and the atmosphere about their cage was full of hair and
+language that would be much like cussing if it could be translated into
+English. Pa tried to quiet the crowd and silence the hyenas by taking an
+iron bar and mauling them, but the hyenas just backed up against the
+rear of the cage and howled and sneezed at pa, and dared him to come on.
+
+[Illustration: The Lion Sneezed and Blew Pa Clear Across the Tent.]
+
+One of them caught him by the shirt sleeve and tore pa's shirt off and
+eat it. Pa was a sight, with no shirt on, and he ought to have gone to
+the dressing room and slicked, but just then the camels and the
+giraffes, who had inhaled their snuff, began to sneeze and beg to be
+killed, and pa had to go over there and quiet them. A camel is the
+solemnist looking beast on earth when he tries to be good natured, but
+when he is sick and mad, and full of snuff, he is a fiend. One such
+camel is enough for a man to handle, but when 14 camels are all sneezing
+at once, and trying to locate the person that is responsible for their
+trouble, it is the safest to keep away, and when pa went in amongst
+them, with no shirt on, and the Arab keepers had run away in fright, it
+was a dangerous thing to do.
+
+But pa is brave even to rashness. He went up to Mahomet, the
+double-humped leader of the herd, who was the leader of the sneezers,
+and kicked him in the slats and told him to hush up his noise. He
+clubbed him on the humps with a tent stake. Then there was a rebellion
+in Egypt, and Mahomet bit pa, and wouldn't let go, and the other camels
+sneezed all over pa, and had him down, walking on him with their padded
+feet. The circus hands had to pull pa out, and it wasn't so bad, because
+the crowd remained and they thought it was a part of the show, and that
+the animals were trained to sneeze that way.
+
+The worst case was the hippopotamus. He was so big, and had such big
+nostrils, that I laid about half a pound of snuff on the side of his
+tank, and when he snuffed it up his nose he got it all. I heard a howl
+from the tank and the herd, who was the leader of the sneezers, and I
+told pa to come on, 'cause Vessuvious was going to erupt.
+
+Pa came on the run, just as he was, and then the worst happened. I think
+the hippo went under water when he found the sneeze was coming, for just
+as pa got to the tank the water flew into the air like a torpedo had
+exploded under a battle-ship, and the hippo had sneezed all right and pa
+and the audience which had followed him were drenched and deafened by
+the explosion. The hippo had blown the water all out of his tank, and he
+lay at the bottom, on his side, sneezing little sneezes not louder than
+the report of a six-pound cannon, and panting for breath. Then he raised
+his head, got up on his feet, and opened his mouth like a gash cut in a
+steer by a cow catcher of an engine, and he yawned, and I guess he got
+the lockjaw, 'cause he kept his mouth open all the afternoon to get the
+air, like a soprano singer in a choir, who has been fed a cayenne pepper
+lozenger by the tenor, just before she gets up to sing: "A Charge to
+Keep, I Have."
+
+We went around and inspected the sneezing animals with the manager, and
+he complimented me by saying I had saved the show from becoming an
+aggregation of stuffed animals, only fit for a taxidermist studio, and
+made every animal show that he had ginger in him. He wanted me to try my
+snuff cure on the performers and freaks, 'cause they were getting to be
+dead ones.
+
+Well, before the day was over at Wilmington, Del., pa was scared worse
+than he ever was in all his life before. The state of Delaware is the
+only state that punishes criminals by tying them up and whipping them on
+the bare back with a cat-o'-nine-tails, and all our men had been warned
+to be good while they were in Delaware, 'cause if they committed any
+crime there was no power on earth that could save them from being
+publicly horsewhipped. Pa himself impressed it on the men to look out
+that they didn't get into any trouble. Gee, but the fear of a public
+whipping makes men good.
+
+Twenty years ago some hold-up men from New York robbed a bank in
+Delaware, and were caught, and given 50 lashes apiece on the bare back,
+by a big negro, and there has never been a burglary in Delaware since.
+We thought we would play a joke on pa, so the manager told pa that
+constables were looking for him to arrest him for cruelty to animals,
+for kicking a camel in the stomach, and hitting the camel with an iron
+bar, and that if pa didn't want to be publicly horsewhipped on the bare
+back he better skip out for Washington, D.C., where we would show in a
+couple of days, and wait for us.
+
+Pa was so frightened he couldn't get supper, and everybody talked about
+cats of nine tails, and how prisoners were cut to pieces, and every time
+pa saw a jay with a slouch hat he thought it was a constable after him.
+After dark he put on an old suit of clothes and said he was going to
+Washington. They told him if he went to take a train he would surely be
+arrested at the depot, so pa put a saddle on one of the mules, and rode
+out of town and rode all night, and all the next day he bought oats of
+farmers to be delivered at Wilmington for the circus. Finally he got out
+of Delaware, and the next day the farmers came in with the oats, but the
+show was gone, and they won't do a thing to pa if he ever shows up in
+Delaware again.
+
+[Illustration: Pa Rode Out of Town and Rode All Night.]
+
+Pa met us at the depot in Washington, but he was ever so changed from
+his long ride and anxiety over the possibility of being arrested and
+pilloried, and lambasted by a negro in Delaware. He said to me, with a
+trembling voice: "Hennery, this 'ere show business is too much for your
+pa. I would rather be a Mormon, in Utah, with 40 wives, and several
+hundred children, and long whiskers. I am a changed man, Hennery, and
+afraid of my shadow."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+    A Senator's Son Bets the Bad Boy That Elephants Are Cowards--They
+    Let a Bag of Rats Loose at the Afternoon Performance--The Elephants
+    Stampede, Pa Fractures a Rib and General Pandemonium Reigns.
+
+
+Gee, but I must be an easy mark. I have got so I bet on a sure thing,
+and when a fellow bets on a sure thing he is bound to lose.
+
+It was this way. The show arrived in Washington, D. C., on a Sunday
+morning, and, as usual, all the boys in town came to the lot to see us
+put up the tents. I was around with pa and the boss canvasman, and the
+town boys could see I belonged to the show, and they envied me and
+wanted to get acquainted with me so I would let them walk around with
+me, and go into the tents Sunday afternoon and see the animals.
+
+There was one boy with a sort of rough rider hat on, and buckskin fringe
+on his pants, and everybody said he was a senator's son, but the other
+boys had rather be acquainted with me, because I belonged to the show,
+and I took pity on the senator's son and let him talk to me, without
+looking cross at him, or snubbing him, as I do most boys who try to butt
+in on me. I got to liking the senator's son and had him come in the
+tent, and we put in the afternoon looking at the animals.
+
+The elephants were chewing hay and looking fierce, and the senator's boy
+said elephants were the greatest cowards on earth, and I said, "Not on
+your life; the giant in our show is the greatest coward, and the
+behemoth of holy writ is next." The senator's son said elephants were
+such cowards they were afraid of mice, and we could take a trap full of
+mice and turn them loose in the ring and the elephants would stampede,
+and he would bet five dollars on it. I excused myself for a moment and
+told pa what the senator's son offered to bet, and pa said: "Here's $50,
+and you can take all the bets you can get. Why, this herd of elephants
+would walk on mice, and rats, too. You bet with him and tell him to
+bring along all the rats and mice he can find in the white house, and
+you can turn them into the ring Monday afternoon when the elephants do
+their turn, and if an elephant bats an eye I will eat his ears for
+mushrooms."
+
+I went back to young Mr. Senator and took his bet, and told him I had
+plenty more money to bet the same way, and he said the next afternoon he
+would come with his mice and rats, and a lot of money to bet that you
+couldn't hold that flock of elephants with log chains when he opened his
+bag of rats and mice.
+
+Well, how it got into the papers I do not know, but the next morning
+they all said an interesting experiment would be made the next afternoon
+at the great and only circus, to determine once and for all whether
+elephants were afraid of mice, and that a senator's son and a son of one
+of the proprietors of the show would conduct the experiment by turning
+loose a lot of mice and rats in the rings at precisely 3:30 p.m.
+
+Well, you never saw such a crowd in a circus as we had that afternoon.
+It seemed as though the whole population turned out, foreign ministers,
+negroes, society people and clerks. That senator's son and the whole
+family, and the neighbors, must have been up all night catching mice and
+rats, and it took nine boys and three servants to carry the baskets and
+traps and bags of mice and rats. I passed them all in and we lined up on
+a front seat to wait for the elephant stunt, and when the thing was ripe
+we were to empty the whole mess of vermin into the ring.
+
+I felt as though something was wrong 'cause I saw the new moon over my
+left shoulder the night before, and now I wish I had died before this
+thing happened. When the Japanese jugglers went out of the ring I knew
+that was the cue for the elephants to come in, and when the dressing
+room curtain was pulled aside and old Bolivar came out at the head of
+the herd, and they marched around the outside of the ring, clear around
+the tent, my heart jumped up into my throat, and I felt sick.
+
+The senator's son said: "When these rats and things begin to chase your
+old elephants, you won't be able to see their tails for the dust they
+will kick up."
+
+Then I thought of the money pa had given me to bet, and I offered to bet
+it all, and a negro produced funds and took all my bets like a
+bookmaker.
+
+Well, after doing a turn around the big ring, the trainer steered the
+elephants into the middle ring, and the great audience leaned forward to
+catch every trick the elephants did.
+
+Us boys held on to the bags that the mice and things were in, waiting
+for our cue. The elephants stood on their heads and hind feet, and fore
+feet, laid down, fired pistols, and did everything just right, without
+making a mistake. Finally the trainer formed the whole herd into a grand
+pyramid, with old Bolivar in the center, each elephant holding an
+American flag with his trunk, and waving it, and the audience broke out
+into a cheer that fairly ripped the canvas.
+
+Then I said to young Mr. Senator: "Come on with your rats, now, and I
+win $50." All hands picked up the baskets and bags and went to the side
+of the ring and emptied the whole bunch of more than 500 into the ring.
+The rats and mice rushed for the elephants, and then turned and made a
+rush for the reserved seats.
+
+Oh, dear, what a time we had. The elephants got down off that pyramid so
+quick it would make your head swim, and old Bolivar trumpeted in abject
+fear, and tried to break away, but pa came along with a tent stake and
+hit Bolivar over the head, and told the trainer to put the elephants
+back into the pyramid and hold them there till the bell rung for them to
+cease their stunt. The trainer couldn't do anything with them, and they
+bellowed and dodged mice and shied at rats, and Bolivar took his trunk
+and swatted pa clear across the ring.
+
+[Illustration: Bolivar Swatted Pa Clear Across the Ring.]
+
+The elephants followed Bolivar to the main entrance, each elephant
+trying to walk on the heels of the one ahead of him, and all the circus
+hands trying to head off the elephants, but they wouldn't head off. They
+were simply scared to death, and they broke out the side of the tent
+near the lemonade stand and went whooping out into the open air and
+freedom, while the audience yelled with joy.
+
+Young Mr. Senator said to me: "What do you think of elephants now?"
+
+I told him to take his money and he darned.
+
+The audience was getting nervous, so the band struck up "A Hot Time in
+the Old Town," and they were quieting down as the curtain raised and the
+horses for the chariot race came out. Just then a woman with red socks
+got up on her chair in the press seats and pulled her dress away up and
+yelled, "Rats!" and another woman screamed and jumped up on a seat with
+her clothes at half mast, and yelled that there were mice on the seats.
+In less than two minutes every woman in the audience, and the bearded
+woman, and the fat woman, were standing up on something, holding up
+their dresses and shaking their skirts and screaming, and when the fat
+woman fell into the arms of the bearded woman, in a faint, and the
+bearded woman dropped the fat woman, pa told the bearded woman he was
+ashamed of her screaming, 'cause she ought to be more of a man than
+that.
+
+Well, every mouse and rat in the bunch seemed to be looking for women to
+scream at them, and there was no use trying to run a show with such an
+excited audience, so pa had the band play "Good Night, Ladies," and he
+announced that the performance might be considered over for the
+afternoon. Everybody made a rush for the exits. Each woman held up her
+skirts and fairly galloped to get away from the mice and rats.
+
+They all got out of the tent finally, and then the managers had a
+meeting to find out who started the trouble, and what it was best to do
+about it. I was sitting alone on a front seat, thinking over the scenes
+of the afternoon, and wondering what the young senator's son would do
+with the money he had won of me, and whether he had depopulated the
+white house of rats and mice, so the president would notice it. I was
+thinking about elephants and wondering if they were cowards by nature,
+or had acquired cowardice by associating with mankind, when pa came
+along and sat down by me, a picture of despair, 'cause Bolivar had
+fractured one of his ribs, and the fat woman had paralyzed his knees
+sitting on his lap while they brought her to after she fainted when she
+thought a rat was climbing into her sock.
+
+Pa sighed, and said: "Hennery, I wanted an exciting life, to keep me
+from brooding over advancing age, and I chose the circus business, but I
+find it is rather too strenuous for me. Each day something occurs to try
+my nerves. I do not claim that you are to blame for it all, but I think
+I could enjoy my position with the show if you would take the first
+train that goes north, and leave me for awhile. What I need is rest. Go,
+boy, go!"
+
+I felt sorry far pa, but I put my arm around him, and I said: "Pa, do
+not fear. I will never desert you, until the season is over. Wherever
+you go, I will go, and I will keep you awake, don't fear. Now that we
+are going into the sunny south, where every man may have it in for you,
+'cause you were a Yankee soldier, I will stay by you, and there will be
+things doing that will make you think the past has been a sweet dream.
+See, pa!"
+
+[Illustration: "Pa, Do Not Fear."]
+
+Pa sighed again, and said: "This is too much!" and he rushed off to find
+the elephants.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy and the Senator's Son Go on an Elephant Chase--The
+    Senator's Son Gets His Friend a Bid to Dinner at the White
+    House--The Trained Seal Swallows an Alarm Clock.
+
+
+The show remained in Washington two days, 'cause it took all one day and
+night to catch the elephants, after the senator's boy and I turned the
+rats and mice loose in the ring while the elephants were forming a
+pyramid. Pa and all the circus hands had to go away down towards the
+Bull Run battlefield to round them up, and young Mr. Senator let me ride
+one of his ponies and he and I went along to help catch the elephants.
+
+We went out through Alexandria towards Bull Run battlefield. There we
+overtook pa and the boss canvasman and the elephant handler, and we met
+some farmers coming into Alexandria with their families, stampeding like
+people out west when the Indians go on the warpath. They had got up in
+the morning to milk the cows and found about 20 elephants in the
+barnyard, making the cows do a song and dance. Pa told them there was no
+danger at all, 'cause he would take any elephant by the tail and snap
+its head off, like boys snap the heads off garter snakes, and I told
+them that me and the senator's boy stampeded the elephants and we could
+drive them back to town like a drove of sheep.
+
+[Illustration: We Met Some Farmers.]
+
+The farmers thought we were great and they followed us back to the farm,
+where we found the herd of elephants had taken possession and were
+having the time of their lives. About a dozen of the big elephants had
+found a couple of barrels of cider in a shed and had been drinking it,
+and when we got there they were like section hands with jags on.
+
+Bolivar, the big elephant, was the drunkest, and when he saw pa coming
+with the gang of hands, with ropes and spears, he winked at the other
+elephants and seemed to say: "Watch me tree 'em," for he came out of the
+gate and bellowed, and made a charge at the gang, and pa beat them all
+going up crab apple trees. The senator's son saw pa up a tree, and he
+said: "Old gentleman, if these are your animals, or insects, or whatever
+they are, you ought to come down off your perch and take them to a
+Keeley cure, because they are intoxicated."
+
+[Illustration: Old Gentleman, You Ought to Come Down Off Your Perch.]
+
+And pa came down and took a fence rail and sharpened it with an ax, and
+he run it into Bolivar about a foot, and Bolivar trumpeted for
+surrender, and that settled the elephant strike, for pa ordered Bolivar
+into the road, and in five minutes the whole herd of elephants was
+following Bolivar back to Washington, as meek as a drunken husband being
+led home by his wife.
+
+Gee, what do you think? The president heard how the senator's boy and I
+stampeded the elephants and invited the senator's boy to bring his young
+friend around to the white house to supper. Well, we went.
+
+I forgot what we had to eat, I was so interested in the president's
+conversation. He talked about the show business as though he had been a
+ringmaster in a circus. He said he was in the show the day before when
+we stampeded the elephants, and he told us about his hunting trips in
+the west, until I could smell bacon cooking at the camp fire, and I
+could smell the balsam boughs they slept on, on the ground.
+
+When he let up a little on his talk, I braced up and asked him if he had
+rather shoot wild cats and bears than be president. He hedged and said
+both occupations worked pretty well together and he had enjoyed 'em
+both. Then I asked him if he was going to run for president again, and
+he winked at his wife, and then he asked me what made me ask the
+question. I told him pa wanted me to find out. I told him all the boys
+wanted him to run, 'cause he was a good feller, and not afraid of the
+cars.
+
+The president laughed and said: "Well, it's this way. The president
+business is a good deal like bear hunting. You get on a fresh track,
+either in politics or bear hunting, and follow the game with dogs, or
+politicians, as the case may be. The trail keeps getting fresher and by
+and by the game is in sight, and the dogs are nipping its hind legs, if
+it is a bear, or chewing big words if it is an opposing candidate, and
+nipping him in exposed places. You ride like mad, your clothes or your
+reputation torn by briars if it is a bear, or by opposition newspapers
+if it is a political campaign, and you wish it was over, many times, and
+are so tired you wish you were dead. Finally your bear or your opponent
+in politics is treed and the dogs are trying to climb the tree, and your
+bear or your political opponent is up on a limb snarling and showing his
+teeth at the dogs or the politicians, and then you ride up, look the
+ground over, wait till your heart stops beating and fire the shot at a
+vital part, and your bear or your political opponent comes tumbling to
+the ground. When he ceases to kick you put your foot on his neck and
+feel sorry you killed him, but you go to work and skin him and hang his
+hide on the fence. Then you have got to ride all night to get to camp,
+if it is a bear, and work harder than a man on a treadmill for four
+years, if it is a presidential candidate you have skun."
+
+I had sat with my mouth open while the president talked, and never said
+a word, but when he quit I said: "Yes, but suppose when you got your
+bear skun, another bear should come after you and dare you to knock a
+chip off his shoulder, and growl, and walk sideways with his bristles
+all up, would you run, or would you stand your ground?"
+
+"We better change the subject," said the president, and rose from the
+table, and we all got up. He patted me on the head, and said: "Tell your
+pa I will see him later, and in the meantime, you run your circus and I
+will try to run mine."
+
+The queerest thing happened that night. The senator's boy spoke of our
+trained seals, that catch a fish if you throw it to them and swallow it
+whole. He said it would be fun to take a little alarm clock and sew it
+up in a fish, and set the alarm at seven o'clock p. m., when the crowd
+is watching the seals swallow fish, and throw it to the big seal, and
+the alarm would go off inside him.
+
+Well, I bit like a bass, and said we would do it, so he took a little
+alarm clock and set it for seven o'clock. We got it into a fish, and I
+am ashamed to tell what happened. Gee, but that seal grabbed the fish
+with a clock in it, and tried to swallow it, but the brass ring caught
+on one of his teeth, and he was trying to get it loose when the alarm
+went off, and the seal jumped out of the tank and began to prance around
+the crowd, scaring the women, and making all the animals nervous. He
+stood on his head and bellowed, and all the circus hands came rushing
+up. Finally the alarm clock quit jingling, and they caught the seal and
+pulled the clock off his tooth, and just then pa came up to me and said:
+"What deviltry you boys up to now? Suppose that seal had swallowed that
+clock, and you couldn't wind it up; it might kill him. Now, go to the
+car, 'cause we are going to get out of this town right off. You make me
+tired." And pa helped to lift the slippery seal into the tank, and
+looked mad at his little boy, and hurt the feelings of the senator's
+boy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+    The Show Strikes Virginia and the Educated Ourang Outang Has the
+    Whooping Cough--The Bad Boy Plays the Part of a Monkey, but They
+    Forget to Pin on a Tail.
+
+
+Well, I have broke the show all to pieces, just by not being able to
+stand grief. Everything is all balled up, the managers are sore at me,
+and afraid of being sent to jail, and pa thinks I ought to be mauled.
+
+It was this way: When we left Washington we cut loose from every home
+tie, and plunged into Virginia, and the trouble began at once. We met a
+lawyer on the train, on the way to Richmond, and fed him in our dining
+car, and got him acquainted with all the performers and freaks, and he
+told us that we would have to be careful in Virginia, 'cause all the
+white people were first families and aristocratic, and if any man about
+our show should fail to be polite to the white people they would be shot
+or lynched, but if we wanted to shoot niggers the game laws were not
+very strict about it, 'cause the open season on niggers run the year
+around, but you couldn't shoot white people only two months in the year.
+He said another thing that scared pa and the managers. He said that if a
+traveling show did not perform all it advertised the owners were liable
+to go to state prison for 20 years, and that each town had men on the
+lookout to see that shows didn't advertise what they didn't carry out.
+
+Pa and the managers held a consultation, and couldn't find that we
+advertised anything that we didn't have, except the ourang outang that
+we took on at New York, which eats and dresses like a man, 'cause that
+animal got whooping cough in Delaware and had to be sent to a hospital,
+but we heard he was well again and would join the show in a week. Pa
+asked the Richmond lawyer how it would be if one of the animals that was
+advertised was sick and couldn't perform, and he told pa the people
+would mob the show if anything was left out.
+
+When we got to Richmond the whole population, principally niggers, was
+at the lot when we put up the tents, and everybody wanted to catch a
+sight of Dennis, the ourang outang, and the posters all over town that
+pictured Dennis smoking cigarettes with a dress suit on, and eating with
+a knife and fork and a napkin tucked under his chin, were surrounded by
+crowds. It was plain that all the people cared for was to see the monk.
+
+The managers held a council of war and decided the show would be ruined
+if we didn't make a bluff at having an ourang outang, so it was decided
+that I was to be dressed up in Dennis' clothes, and put on a monkey
+mask, and go through his stunt at the afternoon performance.
+
+Gee, but I hated to do it, but pa said the fate of the show depended on
+it and if I didn't take the part he would have to do it himself, and I
+knew pa wasn't the build of man to play the monkey, and so I said I
+would do it, but I will never do it again for any show. The wardrobe
+woman fixed my up like Dennis, and I had seen him go through his stunt
+so often I thought I could imitate him, and of course there was no
+talking to do, but just to grunt once in awhile, the way Dennis did, and
+have an animal look.
+
+Well, sir, the keeper who trained the ourang outang took me in hand, and
+in an hour I was perfect, I had rubber feet and wore black gloves, and
+had a tail fastened with a safety pin, that would deceive the oldest
+showman in the business. When the crowd was the biggest, in the middle
+ring, the keeper led me out of the dressing room with a chain. The
+announcement was made by the barker that Dennis, the educated ourang
+outang, that had performed before crowned heads in Europe and sapheads
+in Newport, the only man-monkey in the known world, would now entertain
+the most select audience that had ever been under the tent. Then I was
+dragged into the ring and put on the platform.
+
+[Illustration: The Keeper Who Trained the Ourang outang Took Me in
+Hand.]
+
+They didn't put on my dress clothes at first, but had a little screen on
+the platform for me to go behind to dress, and I appeared first in the
+natural state of the ourang outang, with a suit of buffalo robe stuff
+that looked exactly like a big monkey. I bowed and the audience cheered,
+and I stood on my hands and scratched at an imaginary flea, and pa, who
+was leaning against the platform, whispered to me that I was making the
+hit of the season.
+
+Then the attendants set the table and the keeper took me behind the
+screen and dressed me, and the old fool forgot to put on my tail. He led
+me out and I sat up to the table, hitched up my cuffs, put a napkin
+under my chin, took a knife and fork and began to eat, just like a human
+being. The audience cheered, and the circus people crowded around and
+said I was just as good as Dennis himself. I went through the whole of
+Dennis' performance and never skipped a note, until a smart white man
+yelled: "Where is the tail of your ourang outang?" and the crowd began
+to be suspicious, and more than a thousand yelled. "There is no tail on
+your monkey."
+
+That rattled the trainer and he remembered that he had forgotten to pin
+the tail on me, so while I was using the finger bowl he went to the
+screen and got the tail and came out and was pinning it on to my dress
+pants, when the audience began to yell: "Fraud! Fraud! Kill the monk!"
+and a lot of stuff.
+
+Then pa got on a barrel the elephants had been performing on and got the
+attention of the audience and told them not to be unreasonable. He said
+the management had found by experience that after the ourang outang had
+been trained to eat like a man and wear men's clothes, that his tail was
+in the way, so at a great expense the management had caused Dennis' tail
+to be amputated at a New York hospital, and while we always carry the
+tail along, it was only used when a critical audience demanded it, but
+if this refined audience so desired the tail would be attached to the
+intelligent animal.
+
+The crowd yelled: "Pin on the tail; the tail goes with the hide," and
+the trainer began to pin it on. Say, I could have killed that trainer.
+He run that safety pin about an inch into my spine, and I jumped into
+the air about four feet, and I was going to use a cuss word that I
+learned in Philadelphia, but I had presence of mind enough to grunt just
+as Dennis used to, and chatter like a monkey, and the day was saved. The
+tail was on and I turned my back to show that it was on straight, like a
+woman's hat, when pa said to hurry the performance to a conclusion,
+because he could see that there was a spirit of unrest in the audience,
+and he would not be surprised any moment to see Virginia secede and go
+out of the union.
+
+There was nothing more for me to do except to drink my cup of
+after-dinner coffee, and smoke my cigarette, and quit, and I was patting
+myself on the back at my success and squirming around in the chair,
+'cause the pin in my tail hurt my back but I never said a word. The
+attendant brought in the coffee and I took a couple of swallows, when I
+realized that somebody had put cayenne pepper into it, and I was hot
+under the collar, but though I was burning up inside, I never peeped,
+but just choked and took a swallow of water and vowed to kill the person
+that made the coffee.
+
+I kept my temper till the trainer handed me the cigarette and a match,
+and the first puff I realized that they had filled the cigarette with
+snuff, and after blowing out the smoke I began to sneeze, and the
+audience fairly went wild. I sneezed about eight times, and at every
+sneeze the pin in my spine hurt like thunder, but I never lost my
+temper, till about the seventh sneeze, when my monkey mask flew off, and
+then a boy about my size, right in front of me, yelled: "It ain't a
+monkey at all, it is a little nigger," and he threw a ripe persimmon and
+hit me right in the eye. I said right out in plain English: "You're a
+liar and I can knock the stuffing out of you."
+
+[Illustration: He Hit Me Right in the Eye.]
+
+I pulled off my dress coat and started for him, but pa grabbed me on one
+side and the monkey trainer on the other, and they tried to get me to
+return to the monkey character, and chatter, and pa put my monkey mask
+on me, but I struck right there, and pulled it off, and told him and the
+managers that I would not play monkey any more with a tail pinned to my
+spine, my stomach full of cayenne pepper and my nostrils full of Scotch
+snuff, and my face all puckered up with persimmons.
+
+The crowd yelled: "Fraud! Fraud! Kill the bald-headed old man who is the
+father of the monkey." and they were making a rush to clean out the show
+when the dressing-room door opened to let the hippodrome chariot racers
+out, and the way the chariots scattered the crowd was a caution.
+
+That saved us from serious trouble, for the chariots run over a lot of
+negroes, which pleased the audience, and they let us off without killing
+us. They got me back to the dressing-room and had to take a pair of
+pinchers to get that safety pin out of my spine, and on the way to the
+dressing-room some one walked on my monkey tail and pulled it off, and
+that was a dead loss. Pa sat by me and fanned me, 'cause I was faint,
+and then he said: "My boy, you played your part well, until the
+persimmon hit you, and then you forgot that you were an actor, and
+became yourself, and I don't blame you for wanting to punch that boy who
+called you a little nigger, and said I was your pa. After this chariot
+race is over we will go around in front of the seats, and find the boy,
+and you can do him up. Your monkey business was the feature of the show
+to-day."
+
+We went out and found a boy that looked like the one that sassed me, but
+he must have been his big brother, 'cause when I went up to him and
+swatted him on the nose, he gave me a black eye, and I am a sight.
+
+That evening, at the performance, we cut out the educated ourang outang,
+and the lawyer we met on the cars came to the show, and said we would
+all be arrested for not performing all we advertised, but he could
+settle it for a hundred dollars, and pa paid him the money, and he went
+out and got a jag and came in the show and was going to make trouble,
+when pa took him to the cage where the 40-foot boa constrictor was
+uncoiling itself, and the Virginian got one look at the snake and went
+through the side of the tent yelling: "I've got 'em again. Catch me,
+somebody."
+
+We got out of town before morning, and nobody was arrested, except the
+negroes that got run over in the chariot race.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+    The Circus People Visit a Southern Plantation--Pa, the Giant and the
+    Fat Woman Are Chased by Bloodhounds--The Bad Boy "Runs the
+    Gauntlet."
+
+
+Gee, but pa is sore at me. He has been disgusted with me before, but he
+never had it in for me so serious as he has now. I guess the whole show
+would breathe easier if I should fall off the train some dark night,
+when it was stormy, and we were crossing a high bridge over a stream
+that was out of its banks on account of a freshet.
+
+It was all on account of our taking an afternoon off on a Sunday at
+Richmond. An old planter that used to be in the circus business before
+the war thought it would bring back old recollections to him and give us
+a taste of country life in the south if he invited all of us,
+performers, managers, freaks, and everything, to spend the day on his
+plantation, and go nutting for chestnuts and hickory nuts, pick apples
+and run them through a cider mill and drink self-made cider, and have a
+good time.
+
+We all appreciated the invitation, and after breakfast we rode out in
+the country to his plantation in carriages and express wagons and began
+to do the plantation. The fat lady and the midgets rode out together in
+a load of cotton, and when they got to the house they had to be picked
+like ducks, and they looked as though they had been tarred and
+feathered.
+
+The planter gave us a fine luncheon of fried chicken and corn pone, and
+cider, and pa acted as the boss of the circus folks, while the planter
+and his family, with about 100 negroes, passed things around. They all
+seemed to be interested in seeing how much stuff the giant and the fat
+lady could hold without putting up sideboards to keep the food from
+falling off. If pa hadn't told the negroes not to feed the fat lady and
+the giant any more, there would have been two circus funerals next day.
+
+I got acquainted with a boy that was the planter's son, and while the
+rest were eating and drinking the boy showed me a pack of hounds that
+are kept for trailing criminals and negroes who have looked sassy at
+white women. The trouble with negroes is that they all look alike, and
+if one commits a crime they can prove an alibi, 'cause every last negro
+will swear that at the time the crime was committed the suspected man
+was attending a prayer meeting, so they have to have hounds that can be
+taken to the place where the crime was committed, and they find the
+negro's track, and they follow it till they tree him. The hounds do not
+bite the negro, like we used to hear about, but they just follow him
+till he is treed, and then they bark, as much as to say: "Ah, there, Mr.
+Nigger, you just stay where you are till the sheriff comes to fetch
+you," and Mr. Negro just turns pale and stays on a limb till the sheriff
+comes with his lynching tools. When the sheriff pulls a gun the negro
+confesses right there, and the deputy sheriff brings the rope.
+
+I asked the boy if the hounds would trail a white man without hurting
+him, and he said if you put anise seed on their shoes the hounds will
+trail 'em all right, so we put up a job to have some fun. The boy gave
+me some anise seed, and told me to put it on the shoes of anybody I
+wanted trailed, and after they got out in the woods he would put the
+hounds on the trail, and the people would have to get up trees, or have
+their pants chewed, but the dogs would not hurt anybody.
+
+Well, it made me laugh to think about it. I went to pa and told him his
+shoes were all covered with red Virginia dust, and I took my
+handkerchief and dusted them off, and made him hold up his foot like a
+horse that is being shod. Then I put a handful of anise seed around the
+sole, and in his shoes. He said it was mighty kind in me to do it. Then
+I went to the giant, and brushed the dust off his shoes, and put two
+handfuls of anise seed in them, and he said I was a nice boy. I told the
+fat woman about the dust on her telescope valises, and I rubbed it off,
+and gave her feet a dose of anise seed that ought to have paralyzed a
+pack of hounds. She wanted to hug me and let me kiss her, but I said I
+passed, and she said she would do as much for me some time.
+
+About this time the planter took the lead, and they all went across a
+pasture into the woods, and began knocking nuts off the trees. All
+through the woods there were signs: "No Tresspassing," and "Beware of
+the Dogs," but the planter said to never mind the signs. I told the boy
+to let the dogs loose on the trail in about half an hour, and I went
+along with the folks, and I told pa I had seen a pack of bloodhounds
+that would eat people alive, and if he heard hounds barking to run like
+a whitehead and climb a tree. I got with the giant, who is a coward in
+his own right, and told him the only trouble about these great
+plantations in the south was the wild dogs that inhabited the mountains,
+that would not hesitate to attack a man if they got good and hungry, but
+there was no danger to him, because he was a good sprinter, and could
+outrun a jack rabbit. The giant wanted to go back to the house, 'cause
+he said he didn't want to run no foot race with hounds, and he had seen
+the sign to beware of the dogs. I never ought to have done it, 'cause
+the fat woman looks as though she was built a purpose for apoplexy, but
+I told her as a friend, not to load herself down with nuts, but to
+travel light, so if the wild dogs came down to raid the plantation she
+could crawl in a hole out of sight till the dogs had eaten some of the
+men. She came near fainting right there, before the dogs got busy.
+
+There were about 20 negroes throwing clubs at the nuts, and everybody
+was having a big time. The trapeze performers were squirreling up among
+the limbs, when suddenly, in the distance came the bay of the pack of
+bloodhounds, and every negro turned pale, and got ready to climb a tree.
+The planter stopped to listen, and when one of the managers of the show
+asked him what was the matter, he said: "You can search me, sah. If that
+is my pack of hounds a crime has been committed, and the sheriff has
+started the pack on the trail of the criminal, sah, because the dogs are
+never turned loose, except for business."
+
+Then the planter yelled to the niggers, and said: "If any of youall are
+guilty of crime, you best get scarce, or pick out your tree, and get up
+it mighty sudden, 'cause the hounds haven't been fed lately." Every
+colored man picked a tree, and the hounds kept coming, finally showing
+up jumping the fence, and entering the woods, and the planter cut a club
+to beat off the dogs. Pa looked as innocent as John Wanamaker's picture
+addressing a Sunday school, the giant saw the dogs and started for a
+tall tree, and the fat lady said she couldn't find any hole big enough
+to hide in, and "the idea," if there were not men enough to protect a
+lady.
+
+Well, I never expected to see anything so fine as the way those hounds
+run with their noses to the ground, scattered in three packs one pack on
+the trail of each of the three whose shoes I had doctored. When they got
+near us they broke up and went around everywhere that pa and the giant
+and the fat lady had walked, and fell over each other, but finally one
+pack went to the tall tree where the giant had climbed to the first
+limb, and stood on their hind legs and barked a salute to him. He
+trembled so I was afraid he would fall off, but he wound his arms and
+legs around the tree, and began to cry. The planter told him whatever
+crime he had committed it was all up with him.
+
+The part of the pack that was on pa's trail began to close in on pa, and
+I said: "Pa, if you don't want to be dog meat, it is up to you to climb,
+and you better get a move on, or I shall be an orphan mighty quick,
+'cause the dogs are starving." Pa made a couple of quick jumps, and
+grabbed a limb of a hickory tree, and was pulling himself up and
+repeating prayers, when the leading dog reached up his nose and smelled
+pa's shoes, when the intelligent animal gave a bark and a yell to the
+other dogs, as much as to say: "That's the identical cuss. Eat him
+alive."
+
+He grabbed about a double handful of the cloth of pa's clothes right
+below where his suspenders button on and held on, and shook pa real
+hard, but the cloth was tough and didn't tear. Pa suddenly seemed to be
+endowed with superhuman strength, for he drew himself up on the limb and
+raised the dog from the ground, and all the pack came around the tree
+and set up a howl that scared pa so the perspiration rolled off him, and
+he had a chill so he shook like the ague.
+
+Pa yelled to the planter, who was holding up the fat lady and said:
+"Here, Mr. Confederate, I am not a union prisoner, and I want you to
+unlock your dog's jaws, and free me, 'cause I can't hold up a 90-pound
+dog by my suspenders much longer. If this is southern hospitality, I
+don't want to be entertained no more." The planter leaned the fat lady
+against a tree, and took the dog by the hind legs and pulled him off.
+
+[Illustration: "Here, Mr. Confederate, I Am Not a Union Prisoner."]
+
+The planter yelled to the negroes to come down and help handle the dogs,
+but just then the boy who started the dogs on the trail, at my request,
+came up whistling, with a dog whip in his hand, and all the dogs
+surrounded him, and he made them lay down and roll over. All of the
+scared people came down from their perches in the trees, and surrounded
+the boy and the dogs, and the dogs panted and lolled, as though they had
+been having a nice run for their money. The old planter asked his boy
+how the dogs had happened to get loose, and that fool boy told the whole
+thing, how I had asked him to let the pack run, and how I had put anise
+seed in the shoes of pa, the giant and the fat lady. Then you ought to
+have seen what they did to me. The planter said they usually had a
+lynching when the dogs made a run, but that was impossible in this case,
+so he suggested that they make me run the gauntlet. I didn't know what
+running the gauntlet was, but after pa had told me he should disown me
+from that moment, I said I was willing to run any gauntlet, so they all
+cut switches and formed in two lines, and let me run down between them.
+I thought it would be fun, but when I started and every last man gave me
+a cut across the end of my back with a hickory switch, I yelled murder,
+and run between the giant's legs and tackled him like football I toppled
+him over against the next man, and that man hit the giant in the
+stomach, and everybody began to fight, and the festivities broke up.
+
+[Illustration: I Yelled Murder and Ran Between the Giant's Legs.]
+
+I went to the house with the boy and the dogs, and we set the dogs on a
+mess of cats, and treed everything alive on the plantation. Finally the
+whole crowd came back to the house and had another lunch, with mint
+julep and champagne, and then everybody was hugging some one, and crying
+on each other's neck, and swearing that the war was over, and that the
+north and the south were one and inseparable, and the two together could
+whip the whole world.
+
+Pa somehow saw double. I was standing alone, smarting from the switching
+I got, when pa came up to me and said: "I want you two boys to
+understand that I don't want any more experiments played on me. I can
+take a joke us well as anybody, but when you set a hundred dogs on my
+trail, I am no gentlemen, see? Now we will go back to the show."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy Goes After a Mess of White Turnips for the Menagerie--He
+    Feeds the Animals Horseradish, but Gets the Worst of the Deal.
+
+
+You can learn something new and interesting every day in a circus, and a
+boy, particularly, can store his mind with useful knowledge, that will
+be valuable to him in after years.
+
+Gee, but I have learned some things that I could never have learned in
+college, 'cause at college you only learn things that have to be
+verified by actual experience in business. Pa says one year in the
+circus will be better for me than ten years in a reform school. But I
+learned something yesterday that made such an impression on me that I
+will not be able to sit down comfortably before the season is over.
+
+You see, it was this way. Once a week it is the custom to feed all the
+animals that are vegetarians a mess of ground white turnips, 'cause it
+opens up the pores, and makes the animals feel good, like a politician
+who goes to French Lick springs, and has the whisky boiled out of him.
+After the animals have eaten the turnip mush, they become agreeable, and
+will rub against the keepers, and eat out of your hand.
+
+I had been with pa a dozen times to find a place where we could get a
+few barrels of turnips ground up fine, and so yesterday, when the boss
+animal keeper was sick, and turned his job over to pa, pa told me to go
+out in town, at Lynchburg, Va., and get a couple of washtubs full of
+ground turnips, and have the stuff sent in to the menagerie tent in time
+for the afternoon performance. I got a boy to go with me. We hunted all
+the groceries and couldn't find turnips enough to make a first payment,
+but we found a place where they grate horseradish and bottle it for the
+market, and I ordered two washtubs full of horseradish grated nicely,
+and sent to the tent, but I made the man bill it as ground turnips.
+
+The boy and I played all the forenoon, and when the man started with the
+ground horseradish for the tent, we went along, and I introduced the man
+to pa, and pa O. K.'d the bill, and sent him to the treasurer after the
+money. I was going to get on a back seat and watch the animals eat, but
+pa said: "Here, you boys, get out those pans and portion out the turnips
+and pass 'em around just as the crowd comes in, 'cause after the animals
+have had a mess of cut feed they are better natured, and show off
+better."
+
+I was pretty leery about feeding the animals horseradish, and would have
+preferred to have some one else do it, who did not care to live any
+longer, but I said: "Yes, sir," just like that, and touched my hat to
+pa, and he said to the boss canvasman: "There's a boy you can swear by."
+
+The boss canvasman said: "You are right, old man, but if he was mine, I
+would kill him so quick it would make your head swim," and he and pa
+went off laughing, but I think they laughed too soon.
+
+Well, we took a spud and put about a quart of horseradish in each pan,
+and put the pans in front of each animal, and you ought to have seen
+them rush for the supposed turnips, like a drove of cattle after salt.
+
+The boy and I got up on the platform with the freaks, to be in a safe
+place, and watch the animals, and see how they digested their food. The
+first animal to open up the chorus was the hippopotamus, 'cause we gave
+him about four quarts of horseradish on account of his mouth, and he
+swallowed it at one mouthful. First he looked as though he felt hurt,
+and stopped chewing, and seemed to be thinking, like a horse that wakes
+up in the night with colic, and raises the whole family to sit up with
+him all night and pour things down his neck out of a long-neck bottle.
+The hippo held his breath for about a minute, and then he opened his
+mouth so you could drive a wagon in, and gave the grand hailing sign of
+distress, and said: "Wow, wow, wow," as plain as a man could. Then he
+rolled over into his tank and yelled "murder," and wallowed around, and
+stood on his head, till one of the keepers went in the cage to try to
+soothe him. He chased the keeper out, and the crowd that had just begun
+to come in fell back in terror.
+
+There was quite a crowd around the camels watching them peacefully chew
+their cuds, as they do at evening on the dessert, and the Arabs who had
+charge of the camels were standing around, posing as though they were
+the whole thing, when the old black, double-hump camel got his quart of
+horseradish down into one of his stomachs, as he was kneeling down on
+all fours. He yelled: "O, mamma," and got up on all his feet, and
+kicked an Arab off a prayer rug, and bellowed and groaned. Then the rest
+of the herd of camels seemed to have swallowed their dose, and they made
+Rome howl. This scared the people over to where the sacred cattle were
+trying to set a pious example to the rest of the animals by their meek
+and lowly conduct.
+
+[Illustration: The Camel Kicked an Arab Off a Rug.]
+
+The sacred cow got her horseradish first, and I could see she was trying
+to hold it without giving the snap away, till her husband, the bull, got
+his. Well, it was pitiful, and I made up my mind I would never play a
+joke on the sacred cattle again, 'cause it seems like sacrilege. The
+bull finally got his horseradish down, and he was the most astonished
+animal I ever saw. He swelled up, and then bellowed until the cow looked
+as though she would sink through the ground, saying; "Excuse me, dear,
+but I am not to blame, because I, too, have a hot box." The bull acted
+just as human as could be, 'cause he looked mad at her, and was going to
+gore her to death, when pa and some of the hands came up and hit him
+with a tent stake, and swore at him, and he quit fighting his wife, just
+like a man. Pa wanted to know what in thunder was the matter with the
+animals, and wanted to know if I had fed them the turnips, and I told
+him they had all been fed, and just then the giraffe, whose neck was so
+long the horseradish did not reach a vital spot as quick as it did with
+the hippo, began to yell for the police and dance around. Finally he
+stood on his head and neck, with his heels against a cage, and coughed
+like he had caught pneumonia. Pa said to the boss canvasman: "Well, what
+do you think of that?"
+
+The zebras had their inning next, and after they had swallowed their
+rations of horseradish, they never said a word, but began to run around
+like dancing the lancers, and when they got to going it looked like a
+kaleidoscope, and the six zebras looked like a million. Pa said: "I
+never saw such a sight since I used to drink, but I have either got the
+jim-jams, or something awful has happened to this menagerie."
+
+The educated hog got a double dose, and he squealed and couldn't pick
+out the right card, and then the llamas got busy on their portion of
+horseradish, and they cried in Spanish, and stood on their hind legs and
+shed tears. Pa got so rattled he looked ten years older than he did when
+the afternoon performance opened. The manager of the big show came in to
+know why the elephants had not been sent into the dressing-room, to be
+got ready for the grand entree. Just then the elephants began to eat
+their horseradish, and when they were driven into the big tent they were
+complaining about something being wrong inside of them, and as they came
+by the lemonade stand they seemed to be yelling "Fire!" Then they all
+stopped at the stand and began to drink the lemonade out of the barrels,
+which seemed to put out the fire.
+
+The animals quieted down a little, and pa went into the big tent to
+consult the manager, and I thought it was a shame that the lions and
+hyenas and tigers couldn't have any fun, so I went to the table where
+the meat was laid out ready to feed them, and cut a hole in each piece
+of meat and put in a double handful of horseradish, and just then the
+feeder came along and began to throw the meat in the cages. Gee, but
+those carnivorous animals are bad enough even if you give them nice
+boiled sirloin steak, and they fight enough over it, at any time, but
+when they began to chew and tear the meat, and get horseradish hot from
+the griddle, they didn't do a thing. The audience thought the animals
+would kill everybody. The big lion got his meat down, but it didn't set
+well, and he turned a somersault, and snarled, and pulled the bars of
+the cage, while the grizzly bear rolled up in a ball and rolled over in
+his cage till the men had to hold on to the wheels to keep the shebang
+from going over. The hyenas, who are always mad, went on a tear that
+could be heard in all the tents.
+
+Pa and the managers came back into the menagerie tent with the animal
+keeper, who had been sent for, and they began to try to find out what
+ailed the animals, and the animal keeper asked what pa had been feeding
+them, and pa said he had given them their ground turnips.
+
+"Turnips, indeed," said the keeper, as he took up some of the turnip and
+tasted of it, and he handed a handful to pa. Pa tasted it, and pa had a
+hot box, and the managers tasted of it, and they said: "No wonder." Then
+they asked pa where he got it, and pa said he sent me to order it, and
+then they all said: "That settles it."
+
+[Illustration: Pa Tasted of It.]
+
+I thought I would go 'way and jump in the river, but pa said: "Hennery,
+come here, my angel," and he spit on his hands and picked up a barrel
+stave. I went right up to pa, as innocent as could be, just as any
+dutiful son should, and right there before the animals and freaks
+pa--well, that's the reason I am not sitting down very much these days.
+So long.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+    The Bad Boy and His Pa Inject a Little Politics Into the Show--Rival
+    Bands of Atlanta Citizens Meet in the Circus Tent--A Bunch of Angry
+    Hornets Causes Much Bitter Feeling.
+
+
+I expect that next year I shall be one of the managers of this show,
+'cause they tell me I have got the greatest head of any boy that has
+ever traveled with the show.
+
+We haven't been having a very big business in the south, because the
+negroes haven't money enough to patronize shows, and a lot of the white
+people are either too high-toned or else they are politicians and want a
+pass. The managers and heads of departments held a meeting to devise
+some way to get both classes interested, and everybody was asked to
+state their views. After they all got through talking pa asked me what I
+thought would be the best way to get the people excited about the show,
+and I told him there was no way except to inject a little politics into
+it. I said if they would give me $50 or so, to buy Chinese lanterns, and
+about a hundred complimentary tickets to give away, pa and I could go to
+Atlanta a couple of days ahead of the show and we could organize a
+Roosevelt club among the negroes, and a Bryan club among the white
+fellows, and at the evening performance we could have the two clubs
+march into the main tent, one from the main entrance, and one from the
+dressing room, with Chinese lanterns, and one could yell for Roosevelt
+and the other for Bryan, and advertise that a great sensation would be
+sprung at the evening performance. I said the tent wouldn't begin to
+hold the people.
+
+Every one of the managers and heads of departments said it would be
+great stuff. Pa was the only one that kicked. He said the two
+processions might get into a fight, but I said what if they did, we
+wouldn't be to blame. Let 'em fight if they want to, and we can see fair
+play.
+
+So they all agreed that pa and I should go to Atlanta ahead, and
+organize the political processions, and, say, we had such a time that
+the circus came near never getting out of the town alive. We overdid the
+thing, so they wanted to lynch me, and pa wanted to help.
+
+The way it was was this way: Pa was to organize the white men for Bryan,
+and I was to organize the negroes for Roosevelt, and we went to work and
+bought 600 Chinese lanterns, and pa stored his half of the lanterns in a
+barn on the circus lot and I stored mine in another barn owned by a
+negro that I gave five dollars to be my assistant, with a promise that
+he should have a job traveling with the show, to milk the sacred cow. I
+told this negro what the program was, and that I wanted 200 negroes who
+had an ambition to be politicians, and hold office, and I would not only
+pass them into the show free, but see that they got a permanent office.
+What we had got to do, I said, was to stampede the white procession,
+that would be led by pa, and the way to do it was for every negro in my
+party to skirmish around in the woods and find a hornet's nest, and
+bring it to our barn, and fit it into one of the Chinese lanterns, and
+fix a candle on top of the nest, while the hornets were asleep. Then
+when we met the Bryan procession we were to shout and wave our lanterns,
+and if necessary to whack the white men over the head with the lantern
+with the hornets' nest, and the hornets would wake up and do the rest.
+
+The negro wanted to know how I could prevent the hornets from stinging
+our own men, and I told him that we had been in the hornet business all
+the season and never had one of our own men stung. I said we took some
+assafoetida and rubbed it on our clothes and faces, and the hornets
+wouldn't touch us, but just went for the other fellows to beat the band.
+Say, negroes are easy marks. You can make them believe anything. But if
+I ever get to be president I am going to appoint my negro assistant to a
+position in my cabinet, 'cause he is the greatest political organizer I
+ever saw. He rounded up over 200 cotton pickers and negro men who work
+in the freight depots once in a while and started them out after
+hornets' nests. He gave them some change to get a drink, and promised
+them free passes into the show next night, and the next morning they
+showed up with hornets' nests enough to scare you. They put them in a
+dark place in the barn, so the hornets wouldn't get curious and want to
+come out of the nests before they got their cue.
+
+That afternoon we fitted them into the Chinese lanterns, and tied sticks
+on the lanterns and fixed the candles, and when night came there were
+more negroes than I could use, But I told them to follow along, and the
+door tender would let them in, and all they need to do was to yell for
+Teddy when I did, and so we marched to the main tent about the time the
+performance got to going. I saw pa with his gang of white men go into
+the dressing room at about the same time. The manager had timed it for
+us to come in about 8:30, into the main tent, when the elephants were in
+their pyramid act, so my crowd of negroes stopped in the menagerie tent
+half an hour waiting to be called.
+
+I wish I wasn't so confounded curious, but I suppose I was born that
+way. I took one of the Chinese lanterns that was not lighted and just
+thought I would like to see what the hyenas and the big lion, who were
+in the same cage, with an iron partition between them, would do if a
+Chinese lantern was put in the cage, so I got the fellow that watches
+the cage to open up the top trap door, and I dropped a Chinese lantern
+with a hornets' nest in it right between the two hyenas. Gee, but you
+ought to have seen them pounce on it, and bite it and tear it up, and
+then the hornets woke up, and they didn't do a thing to that mess of
+hyenas. The hyenas set up a grand hailing sign of distress, and howled
+pitiful, and the lion raised up his head and looked at them through the
+bars as though he was saying, in a snarling way, "What you grave robbers
+howling about? Can't you keep still and let the czar of all the animals
+enjoy his after dinner nap?"
+
+Just then the hyenas kicked what was left of the hornets' nest under the
+bars into his side of the cage, and he put his foot on it and growled,
+and about a hundred hornets gave him his. He gave an Abyssinian cough
+that woke all the animals, and then the hornets scattered and before I
+knew it the zebras were dancing a snake dance and all of them were
+howling as though they were in the ark, hungry, and the ark had landed
+on Mount Ararat.
+
+Just then one of the assistant managers beckoned to me to lead in my
+procession and we lighted the candles in our Chinese lanterns. I didn't
+stop to see how the animals got along with the hornets, but I couldn't
+help thinking that if one hornets' nest could raise such a row, what
+would a hundred or so do when we got to going in the other tent?
+
+Oh, if I had only died when I was young, I never would have witnessed
+that sight. The band played, "There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town
+To-night," and pa's crowd of white trash marched around the big outside
+ring shouting, "Bryan! Bryan! What's the matter with Bryan!" and the
+audience got up on its hind legs and yelled--that is the white folks
+did--and then we marched around the other way, and yelled, "Teddy is the
+stuff! Teddy is the stuff!" and the negroes in the audience yelled. Then
+my crowd met pa's crowd right by the middle ring, where the elephants
+had formed the pyramid that closes their act, and the Japanese jugglers
+were in the right-hand ring, and a party of female tumblers, with
+low-necked stockings, were standing at attention in the left-hand ring.
+
+There was no intention of having a riot, but when pa yelled, "What's the
+matter with Bryan?" a negro in my crowd yelled, "That's what's the
+matter with Bryan," and he hit pa over the head with his Chinese
+lantern, loaded with a warm hornets' nest as big as a football, which
+had taken fire from the candle. Pa dropped his lantern and began to
+fight hornets, and then all the white trash in pa's bunch rushed up and
+began to whack my poor downtrodden negroes with their Chinese lanterns.
+Of course, my fellows couldn't stand still and be mauled, and the
+candles had warmed our hornets' nests so the hornets were crawling out
+to see what was the trouble. Then every negro whacked a white man with a
+hornets' nest and the audience fairly went wild with excitement.
+
+[Illustration: He Hit Pa Over the Head with His Chinese Lanterns.]
+
+The hornets got busy and went for the elephants and the Japanese
+jugglers, and they stampeded like they never met a hornet before.
+
+[Illustration: The Stampeded Like They Never Met a Hornet Before.]
+
+The female tumblers found hornets on their stockings, and everywhere,
+and they gave a female war whoop and rushed for the dressing room. The
+elephants got stung and they came down off their pyramid and went out to
+the menagerie tent trumpeting, and switching their trunks. The negroes
+and the white politicians were getting into a race war, so the circus
+hands rushed in and separated them, and my negroes found that the fetty
+I had them rub on themselves did not keep the hornets from stinging
+them, so they stampeded.
+
+Then the hornets began to go for the audience, and the women yelled
+murder and pulled down their dresses to cover their shoes, and the men
+got stung and the whole audience stampeded into the open air.
+
+Then I met pa, and he was a sight, and I never got stung once. The
+managers tried to get the band to play some tune that would soothe and
+hold the audience till an explanation could be made, but somebody had
+thrown a hornets' nest under the band seats and the horn players got
+stung on the lips so they couldn't play, and the band all lit out for a
+beer garden. Before I realized it the show was over, and a detective
+that detects for the show had me collared and brought me up before a
+meeting of the managers. Pa was the prosecuting attorney, and told them
+that I didn't run my politics fair, 'cause I had brought in a lot of
+ringers. The managers asked me how the hornets' nests came to be in the
+Chinese lanterns. I told them they would have to ask the negroes for how
+was I to know what weapons they had concealed about their persons, any
+more than pa was responsible if his politicians carried revolvers.
+
+They said that looked reasonable, but they believed I knew more about it
+than anybody, but as we had to pack up the show and make the next town
+they wouldn't lynch me till the next day. Pa got me to put cold cream on
+his stings, and then he said, "Hennery, you are the limit."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+    The Show Does Poor Business in the South--Pa Side Tracks a Circus
+    Car Filled with Creditors--A Performance Given "For the Poor," Fills
+    the Treasury--A Wild West Man Buncoes the Show.
+
+
+Gee, but this show has been up against it the last week. We haven't made
+a paying stand anywhere. The show business is all right when you have to
+turn people away, or let them in on standing room. Then you can snap
+your fingers at fate, and drink foolish water out of four-dollar bottles
+of fizz that has the cork trained so it will pop out clear to the top of
+the tent, and make a noise that makes you think you own the earth, but
+when you strike the southern country where the white men have not sold
+their cotton and the negroes have not been paid for picking it, the
+audience looks like a political caucus in an off year, when there is
+nobody with money enough to stimulate the voters. When the audiences are
+small, and half the people in attendance get in on bill-sticker's
+passes, and you can't pay the help regularly, but have to stand them off
+with promises, you are liable to have a strike any minute. The people
+you owe for hotel bills, and horse feed, and supplies, follow you from
+one town to another, threatening to attach the ticket wagon and levy on
+the animals. It takes diplomacy and unadulterated gall to run a show.
+
+We are playing now to get back into the northern states, but we have to
+leave an animal of some kind in the hands of a sheriff every day, which
+has been all right so far, 'cause we have steered the sheriffs on to
+elephants that have corns so they are no good except to eat, one zebra
+that was made up by a painter, who painted stripes on a white mule, and
+one lion that was so old he will never sell at forced sale for enough to
+pay for the beef tea the sheriff will have to feed him.
+
+When creditors in a town get too mad and threaten to attach things, we
+invite them to go along with us for a few days, and get their money when
+we strike a paying stand, and we agree to furnish them a Pullman car and
+all they can eat. That is rather tempting to country people, so we had a
+full car load of creditors with us for a week, and we gave them plenty
+to drink, so they had the time of their lives, but they didn't get their
+money. After going with us all through Georgia, they held an indignation
+meeting in the car, and between high balls and cheese sandwiches they
+got sleepy, and we side tracked their car in the woods at a station in
+Mississippi, where there was a post office, saw mill and a cotton gin. I
+guess they are there yet unless Mr. Pullman's lost car experts have
+found the car and driven them out with fire extinguishers.
+
+Pa came pretty near being left in that car with the creditors in
+Mississippi. He was helping to entertain the guests, and jollying them
+up to believe they would get their money when we got to Memphis the next
+day, when he noticed the car had been sidetracked, and he knew that was
+the way we were going to dispose of the creditors. He thought some one
+would tell him when to get off, but he was sitting up with a landlady
+from some place in Georgia that we owed a lot of money for feeding the
+freaks, and she was threatening that if she didn't get her money she
+would have the heart's blood of some one. So pa was afraid to leave for
+fear she would stab him.
+
+But when the car stopped on the siding, pa took off his coat and hat and
+yawned, and said he guessed he would turn in, and she let him go to his
+berth, and he got out on the platform, and just then the second section
+of our train came along, and stopped for water, and pa crawled into an
+animal car and laid down in the straw with the sacred cow. She bellowed
+all night 'cause the sacred bull, her husband, had been attached for
+debt at Vicksburg, but when pa got in the car in his shirt sleeves and
+humped his shoulders up on account of the cold, the cow thought maybe
+she had been unnecessarily alarmed, and maybe pa was her husband.
+
+So she quit bellowing, and laid down and chewed her cud till daylight.
+Then when she saw that pa was another person she got mad and chased him
+up into the rafters of the car, and he had to ride there until the train
+got to Memphis. The hands rescued pa, but he got away from the creditors
+all right.
+
+[Illustration: The Sacred Cow Chased Pa Up Into the Rafters of the Car.]
+
+We made a new lot of creditors at Memphis, and they proposed to go along
+with us, but we shook them off.
+
+Gee, but we made a killing in Memphis, and don't you forget it. We had
+handbills on all the wagons in the parade, telling the people that the
+proceeds of the afternoon and evening performance would be given to
+deserving persons, in charity, and the intention was to use the money to
+pay off the hands. My, but how the people turned out. The tents were all
+full, and we had more money than we have had in a month before, and
+after the performance at night the mayor and some prominent citizens
+waited on the management and asked when and where we were going to
+distribute the money to the deserving persons.
+
+The managers appointed pa to stand off the committee. Pa said he had
+noticed, in walking about the city, a beautiful park in the center of
+the town, and he told the committee that his idea was to have the
+deserving people gather at the park the next morning, which was Sunday,
+and wait there until the managers of the show could count the money, and
+prepare to distribute it, honestly and impartially, with the advice of
+the local committee. That seemed all right, and the committee notified
+the citizens to meet in the park at nine o'clock the next morning, and
+receive the money the citizens had so kindly contributed to such a noble
+cause, and they went away.
+
+Our show has got out of a good many tight places, but we never got out
+of a town so quietly and unostentatiously as we got out of Memphis
+during that early Sunday morning. There was not noise enough made
+getting our stuff to the train to wake up a policeman, and before
+daylight the different sections of the train had crossed the big bridge
+into Arkansas, and were on the way to the Indian Territory. Pa and the
+other managers were on the platform of the last car of the last section,
+as it pulled out across the river, at daylight, and even that early it
+seemed as though the whole colored population of Memphis was on the way
+to the park, to secure good positions, so they could receive their share
+of the money. As the train got to the middle of the river, and safe into
+Arkansas, the whole management breathed a sigh of relief. The boss
+canvasman said: "It is like getting money from home," and pa said: "It
+is like taking money from the tin cup of a blind organ grinder," and the
+treasurer of the show said, as he put the day's receipts in the safe in
+the business car: "It looks good to me." Then they all turned in to
+sleep the happy hours away, that beautiful Sunday on the way to Indian
+Territory and Oklahoma.
+
+Well, sir, you can never make me believe that money obtained dishonestly
+will stay by a person, or do him any good, and that was demonstrated in
+the case of our show the next day. We got acquainted with an old showman
+who was out of luck, who used to run a wild west show, but got busted
+up, and as he didn't care where he went, we took him with us on the
+train, and all day Sunday he talked about his show experiences, and
+finally he said if we had any horses with our show that could run races,
+we could make a barrel of money at Guthrie, where we were to make our
+next stand. He said the Indians and half breeds all had Indian ponies
+that they thought could beat any horses that ever wore shoes, and that
+they would bet every cent they had on their ponies, and as they had just
+been paid their annuities by the government, they had money in bales,
+and we could get it all, if we had horses that were any good, and money
+to back them. His idea was to give out that owing to some accident we
+could not give an afternoon performance, and just get out the horses and
+bet the Indians to a standstill, and win all their money, and give a
+free evening show as a sort of consolation to the Indians.
+
+Well, it looked good to pa, and he talked to the other managers, and the
+result was when we got to Guthrie we had made up our minds that as money
+was what we were after, the easiest way was to get it by racing our
+horses.
+
+So when we got settled in Guthrie, and got the tent up, we announced
+that part of the show was in a wreck down the road in Arkansas, and we
+should have to abandon the afternoon performance, but in the meantime
+there would be a little horse racing on the side, if anybody in Oklahoma
+had any horses they thought could run some.
+
+Well, I thought there were Indians and ponies and squaws enough before
+the announcement was made, but in less than two hours more than a
+thousand ponies were being brought in, and we got our chariot racers,
+and our bareback hippodrome horses, and they were being led around and
+admired, and we all laughed at the little runts of Indian ponies, and
+the Indians got mad and backed their ponies.
+
+Pretty soon the races began in the vacant lot just outside the town. The
+old showman we had brought up from Memphis was made master of
+ceremonies, 'cause he could talk Choctaw, and Comanche, and other Indian
+jargon, and things got busy. The Indians wouldn't run their ponies more
+than an eighth of a mile, or a quarter, and we consented, because the
+poor little things didn't look as though they could run a block, they
+were so thin, and sleepy. Pa was afraid the humane society would have us
+arrested for cruelty to animals. All our fellows were provided with
+money, and they flashed rolls of bills in the faces of the Indians, and
+finally Mr. Indian would reach down under his clothes and pull out a
+roll, and wet his thumb and peel off big bills, and before we knew it we
+were investing a fortune in the racing game. Then the racing began, and
+the horses were sent off at the drop of a hat, or the firing of a
+pistol.
+
+I was given some money to bet with the little Indians, 'cause pa said we
+wanted to get every dollar in the tribe, for if we didn't get it the
+Indians would spend it for fire water. The first race was between one of
+our best runners and a sleepy little spotted pony, and when the hat was
+dropped the pony made a few jumps and was off like a rabbit, and our
+horse couldn't see him for the dust, and our horse was distanced. The
+next race resulted the same, and all day long we never won a race, and
+the Indians took our money and put it in their pants and never smiled.
+The old showman we had befriended seemed crushed.
+
+[Illustration: The Pony Was Off Like a Rabbit.]
+
+When our money was nearly all gone to the confounded Indians, and the
+sun was going down, he went up to pa and said: "Uncle, what does this
+all mean? I thought your horses could run."
+
+Pa said: "Damfino, I never was no horse racer, nohow."
+
+When our money was all gone, and our horses were nearly dead from
+fatigue, the managers all got together in the big tent for a
+consultation on finances, and it was the saddest sight I ever saw. Pa
+tried to be cheerful, and he said: "Well, we will give the evening
+performance, and when the Indians are all in the tent we can turn out
+the lights and turn the boys loose on them, and maybe they will find
+some of the money in their breech clouts."
+
+"You don't mean to rob them, do you?" said the boss canvasman, and pa
+said: "No, no; far from it. We will borrow it of them. It is no harm to
+borrow from an Indian."
+
+Just then the treasurer came in with an empty tin box he had carried the
+money out in, and he said there would be no use of having an evening
+performance, 'cause the Indians had taken their ponies and squaws and
+money and gone towards the setting sun, and pa said: "Where is that old
+showman?" and the treasurer said: "He has gone with them. He is their
+legal adviser, and went down to Memphis to rope us into the game."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+    The Circus Has Bad Luck in Indian Territory--A Herd of Animals
+    Turned Out to Graze Is Stampeded by Indians--They Go Dashing Over
+    the Plains, and the Circus Tent Follows, Picked Up by a Cyclone. No
+    more horse racing for this circus.
+
+
+The managers held a meeting at Guthrie, Okla., after we had lost our
+money horse racing with the Indians, and pa said the consensus of
+opinion was that we better stick to the legitimate show business, and
+not try to work in any side lines. Pa says he made a speech at the
+managers' meeting, in which he showed that the business man who attended
+strictly to the business which he knew all about, would make money,
+while the man who knew about dry goods, but worked in a millinery store
+or a stock of tinware, got it in the neck. He would either get stuck on
+the head milliner, or buy a stock of tinware that would not hold water.
+
+So a resolution was passed to the effect that hereafter no temptation
+could be great enough to get our show to go into anything outside of the
+business, no matter how good it looked as a get-rich-quick affair. So we
+gathered up our show and played a whole week in Oklahoma, and had full
+houses all the time, and made money enough to redeem our animals that
+had been attached by creditors. We have paid up our debts, and we got
+out of Oklahoma with flying colors.
+
+If we had gone right on to Kansas we would have shown sense, but some
+cowboys from the Indian Territory told pa and the other managers that if
+we would take the show to the Indian Territory we couldn't get cars
+enough to haul the money away, as the Indians had got round-shouldered
+and bow-legged carrying the money they had made grazing cattle, and the
+territory was full of cowboys that had money to burn, and they hadn't
+seen a circus since the war.
+
+Well, it seemed a shame to go by the Indian Territory, and allow those
+poor Indians to break their backs carrying money around, and so we sent
+a carload of bill pasters into the territory and billed towns that would
+hold us about a week, and we figured that we would clean up enough money
+to last us all a life-time. I wish I didn't have to write about the
+result, 'cause we are broke up so we can't look pleasant to have our
+pictures taken.
+
+It was a bright, beautiful Sunday morning that we arrived at Muskoka,
+and soon after daylight we had our tents pitched. As we had all day
+Sunday to rest, pa suggested that it would be a good idea to take all
+our animals that eat grass out on the grazing ground on the edge of the
+town and let them fill up on the nice blue grass that was knee-high all
+over the country. So after breakfast we detailed men to take charge of
+the different animals, and herd them out in the tall grass. It was a
+beautiful sight to see those rare animals, gathered from all over the
+world, eating grass together, in perfect peace, in this new country. The
+animals that we thought would stand without hitching, like the
+elephants, were cared for by their attendants, but the animals that
+might wander from their own fireside, were picketed out, or held by long
+ropes, the deer, the buffalo, the zebras, the sacred cattle, the elk,
+the yaks, the camels and that kind, were tied with long lariats, and
+held by the men detailed by the managers. For a couple of hours the
+animals just gorged themselves, after they had kicked up their heels a
+spell and rolled in the grass. Then one of the elephants got up on his
+hind feet and held up two toes, like boys in school hold up two fingers
+when they want to go in swimming, and the elephant started for a creek
+and went in the water, and the whole herd followed, and they spattered
+each other, and ducked and rolled around just like school boys. The
+whole population of the town, whites and Indians, came to the bank of
+the river to watch the fun.
+
+Pa was holding his elk by a rope and one of the managers had a rope
+around the neck of a giraffe: the treasurer and the ticket taker was
+leading the zebras, and everybody was busy with some kind of animal, and
+I had a rope around an antelope, and some of our men on horseback were
+herding the buffaloes. It didn't seem as though anything wrong could
+happen. The elephants wouldn't come out of the creek, so the boss
+canvasman went over to where there were about 500 cowboys and Indians on
+horseback, and asked them to ride into the creek and drive the elephants
+out where the rest of the animals were, on the prairie.
+
+Gee, but that was the greatest mistake he could have made. The men on
+horseback didn't want any better fun, so they made a charge, in line of
+battle, just like Sheridan's cavalry, down the bank, into the creek,
+yelling and waving lariat ropes, and snapping whips and the elephants
+got out of that creek in a hurry. The cowboys threw lassoes over the
+hind feet of the elephants, and tried to hold them, and the elephants
+bellowed, and dragged the cowboys and their ponies right amongst the
+other animals, and in about a minute, as the boss canvasman said when he
+came to, and they were picking the cactus thorns out of him: "Hell was
+just plumb out for noon."
+
+The buffaloes smelled the Indians, and they started to stampede, like
+they used to do when they lived on the plains, and all the animals
+followed, dragging the men who had hold of their ropes, and away we all
+went over a rise of ground, the zebras in the lead and the elephants
+fetching up the rear, the cowboys and Indians behind, yelling and
+ki-i-ing, and more than 500 Indian dogs barking.
+
+Well, pa was the foolishest man in the lot, 'cause he had tied the
+lariat rope that he held his elk by, around his belt, and when the elk
+went over the hill pa was only hitting the high places, and he was
+yelling for me to head off his elk. But I was busy trying to keep up
+with my antelope, which was scared worse than any animal in the race.
+When the antelope and I overtook the boss canvasman, who was digging his
+heels into the ground trying to hold his zebra, I thought it was a good
+time to say something pleasant, so I said: "This is a lovely country we
+are passing through," but I never heard his reply, 'cause just then the
+zebra jumped over a big cactus and the boss canvasman went into it, and
+stayed there, yelling for a piece of ice, while the zebras that were
+dragging the treasurer and the ticket taker passed us. I yelled to the
+treasurer and told him I should have to have my salary raised if I was
+expected to keep up with my antelope, but he told me where to go to get
+an increase of salary, some place in Arkansas--maybe Hot Springs.
+
+[Illustration: Dad Was Only Hitting the High Places.]
+
+[Illustration: The Boss Canvasman Went Into a Cactus.]
+
+Then my antelope heard the Indians and cowboys coming behind, and he got
+his second wind, and I never did touch the ground no more, and I must
+have looked like a buzzard sailing through the air. When my antelope got
+up to where pa was trying to keep up with his elk. I told pa he better
+let go his elk and get the cowboys and Indians to ride around ahead of
+the stampede and head them off.
+
+Pa said he couldn't let go of his elk 'cause the rope was tied to his
+belt, but for me to hit the ground somewhere ahead and let go of that
+jack rabbit I was chasing, and tell the cowboys to head off the
+stampede. So when I lit again I let go the rope, and the antelope got
+ahead of everything, and I wished I had bet on him.
+
+When the cowboys and Indians got up to me I delivered the message from
+pa, and they divided and went around the flanks of the stampeders, and
+in another mile they headed them off in a nice pasture, and kept riding
+around the animals so they couldn't get away. They soon had the whole
+bunch under control, and we all got together to see if anybody was hurt.
+
+Well, pa was the worst sight of all If his belt had broke he never would
+have lost his pants, 'cause more than a million cactus thorns had gone
+through and pinned them on. We had to cut them off, and pull out the
+thorns with pincers, one at a time, and pa yelling murder for every
+thorn. The boss canvasman was in the same fix, and everybody that tried
+to hold an animal was pinned together with thorns, and they had gravel
+up their trousers from sticking their heels into the soil.
+
+Everybody was mad and they threatened to lynch pa when they got back to
+the tent for suggesting letting the animals out to graze. We started
+back to town, the cowboys and Indians driving the animals, and the
+zebras and giraffes kicking up and acting as though they had got out of
+school on account of the death of a dear teacher, like schoolboys.
+
+Before we got to town a wind came up so strong that we had to walk
+edgewise to go against it, and finally we met the tent coming out to
+meet us, 'cause a cyclone had taken it bodily and was blowing it all
+over the prairie. And when we got to town the animals in the cages, that
+can't eat grass, were having an indignation meeting, and howling awful.
+
+Pa was the first man to get back to the lot, and he asked me what I
+thought he better do, and I told him he better get in the porcupine
+cage, 'cause he looked, with the cactus thorns sticking out of him, like
+the father of all porcupines. He said I thought I was smart, and he
+asked me if I was hurt any, and I told him all I could find was a stone
+bruise on my spine where I struck a prairie dog house.
+
+Well, we got the animals into a livery barn, and it took us almost the
+whole week to have the tent hauled back and sewed together, and we had
+to pay the cowboys and Indians more than the animals were worth to bring
+them back, and let them into the show free. The managers had a meeting
+and resolved to get out of the Indian Territory and into Kansas just as
+quick as possible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+    Pa Is Sent to a Hospital to Recuperate--The Bad Boy Discourages
+    Other Boys from Running Away with the Circus--He Makes Them Water
+    the Camels, Curry the Hyenas and Put Insect Powder on the Buffaloes.
+
+
+This is the first time since we started out with the circus in the
+spring that pa and I have not been two "Johnnies on the spot," ready for
+anything that the managers told us to do. Oklahoma, though, and the
+Indian Territory, have been too much for pa, and they sent him on to
+Kansas City to recuperate in a hospital for a week, while the show does
+Kansas to a finish, and makes a triumphal entry into Missouri.
+
+I wonder how the show will get along without us for a week, 'cause they
+sentenced me to go along with pa, so I could be handy to hold his hands
+when the doctors are pulling cactus needles out of his hide. I guess pa
+was willing enough to jump Kansas in the night from what he told us
+once.
+
+He said when he was a young man he and a railroad brakeman got busted at
+Topeka, and they had an order book printed, and went all over Kansas
+taking orders for Osier willows, which they warranted to grow so high in
+two years they would make fences for the farms that no animals or
+blizzards could get over or through, and make shade for the houses and
+the whole farm. It was the year when the Osier willow craze was on and
+every farmer on the plains wanted to transform his prairie into a
+forest. Pa says the farmers fought with each other to sign orders, and
+some paid in advance, so as to get the willow cuttings in a hurry. Well,
+pa and the railroad man canvassed Kansas, and sold more than forty
+thousand millions of Osier willow cuttings, and put in the whole winter.
+In the spring, when it was time to deliver the goods, they went into the
+river bottoms and cut a whole lot of "pussy willow" cuttings, delivered
+them to the farmers and got their money, and went away. When the pussy
+willow cuttings died in their tracks, or grew up just plain pussy
+willows that never got high enough to hide a jack rabbit, the farmers of
+Kansas loaded their guns and waited for pa and the brakeman to come back
+to Kansas, but they never went back.
+
+The brakeman became president of a great railroad, but when he has to go
+across the continent in his special car, he dodges Kansas, and goes
+across by the northern or southern route. Pa has so far dodged the
+farmers, but money wouldn't have hired him to stay with the circus and
+meet those farmers that they sold the willow gold bricks to. And yet,
+when I bunco anybody around the show, pa takes me one side and tells me
+that honesty is the best policy, and to never lie, 'cause my character
+as a man will depend on the start I make as a boy. He don't want me to
+go through life regretting the past, and being afraid of the cars for
+fear some act of my younger days will become known and queer me. I guess
+pa knows how it is hisself.
+
+Well, if there is one thing I am proud of, it is that I have always been
+good. When I grow up to be a man, prosperous in business, and belonging
+to a church, and married, and have children growing up around me, I can
+put on an innocent face and a bold front, and point to my past with
+pride, if I should go to live among strangers, where nobody took the
+papers, and the people were not on to me. Pa says as long as your
+conscience is clear, and your pores open, life is one glad, sweet song.
+Well, I don't know, but if pa's conscience is clear, he must have
+strained it the way they do rain water, to get the wigglers out, or
+else he has used an egg to settle his conscience, the way they settle
+coffee. If his pores are open, he has opened them in the old way, with
+a corkscrew. But, with all I have had to contend with in the way of a
+frightful example from pa, I am not so worse.
+
+How many boys of my age, do you suppose, could put in a season with a
+circus and have all the facilities I have had to go wrong, and come out
+as well as I have? The way the freaks just doted on me would have turned
+the heads of most boys, but when I found out that all of them, from the
+fat woman and the bearded woman, to the trapeze performers, ate onions
+three times a day, I said: "Nay, nay, Hennery will camp with the
+animals, whose smell is natural, and not acquired."
+
+Say, do you know I have saved hundred of boys this summer from ruin,
+'cause in every town there are lots of boys who want to run away from
+home and go off with a circus, and 'cause I belonged to the show they
+all came to me, and pa appointed me to discourage the boys, and drive
+them away from the show. I know in Virginia all the boys wanted to run
+away, and but for me the state wouldn't have boys enough to grow up and
+shoot the negroes. But when I found boys who wanted to skip away from
+home, I would give them a job, and they would have slept in the straw
+with the horses, and eaten at the second table after the negroes had
+been fed, if they could only shake their comfortable homes and loving
+friends and join a traveling circus.
+
+Well, I always gave such boys a job watering the camels, and after they
+had carried water from daylight till dark, and had seen it disappear
+down a camel, and the camels grumbling because they didn't bring water
+faster, the boys would ask me how long it look to fill up a camel,
+anyway. I would tell them that if they kept right at work, the camels
+ought to be filled up full along in the fall. The boys would reluctantly
+resign. Our camels have been the making of hundreds of boys by their
+tank-like capacity to hold water. One boy at Richmond, Va., got it on me
+by getting a section of fire hose and hitching it to a hydrant, and
+letting the water run into a trough at the camel stand in the menagerie,
+and before I knew it the camels had filled up until they were swelled
+four times as big as they ought to be. Then they laid down, and couldn't
+march in the grand entree, and pa sent for a plumber to have the camels
+fixed with faucets. That boy was a genius, and we kept him and put him
+into the lemonade privilege. You can fill a camel with a hydrant all
+right, but if you bring the water in pails he will beat the game.
+
+I remember one boy at Wilmington, Del., who insisted on going along with
+the show, 'cause his mother made him work after school, and my heart was
+touched, 'cause I know how a boy hates to work after school, so I gave
+him a job sprinkling insect powder on the buffaloes, that were
+scratching themselves against the tent poles so much that I felt they
+had something alive concealed about their persons. That boy started in
+with his can of insect powder on a buffalo calf, and then he filled the
+cow's hair full of the powder, and when he started on the bull, the bull
+took a sniff of the powder on the cow, and got it up his nose, and he
+held his head up kind of scared like, and turned his upper lip
+wrong-side out, and began to paw the ground. Then he made a charge on
+that boy, and tossed him through the tent, and I looked through the
+hole, and saw the boy scratching gravel towards town. If he is not
+running yet, he is probably doing chores for his mother both before and
+after school.
+
+[Illustration: The Bull Tossed the Boy Through the Tent.]
+
+I have discouraged most of the boys who wanted to run away and go with
+the show, by giving them a curry comb and brush and telling them they
+could have a permanent job currying off the hyenas. Most boys would look
+sort of dubious about it, but would think it was up to them to be game,
+and they would take the curry comb and brush all right. I would take
+them to the cage, and tell them to just talk soothing to the hyenas
+through the bars, and when the hyenas began to get tame and act as
+though it would give them pleasure to be curried off, and laid down and
+rolled over, and purred like a cat that wanted to be scratched, and
+acted as though they would eat out of one's hand, the boys might call
+me, and I would have the cage opened and they could go in and curry them
+off.
+
+Well, it would kill you dead to see a fool boy side up to a hyena cage
+and try to hypnotize a hyena by kind words and a pious example, saying
+soothing words like: "Soo, boss," or "O, come off now, and be a good
+fellow," and see the hyena snarl and show his teeth like an anarchist
+that a multi-millionaire might try to tame so he would take a roll of
+money out of his hand without biting the hand. I have had boys stand in
+front of a hyena cage with a curry-comb and brush all day, trying to get
+on good terms with the hyenas, and occasionally the hyenas would forget
+to snarl and the boy would think the animals were beginning to weaken,
+and the boy would work up closer to the cage, and say: "Pretty pussy,"
+and hold out his hand and say: "Good fellow." Then the whole cageful of
+hyenas would make a rush for him, howling, snapping and scratching, with
+their bristles up, and the boy would fall backwards over a sacred cow.
+About this time I would come along and ask the boy if he had got the
+hyenas curried, 'cause if he had, I wanted him to curry the grave
+robbers--the jackals. Then the boy would reluctantly give up his tools,
+and say if I wanted the hyenas and jackals curried off I could do it
+myself. I would tell them they would never do for the circus business,
+'cause faint heart never won fair hyena. Then they would go home and
+sell their mother's copper boiler to get money to pay their way in the
+show. Gee, but I have saved lots of boys from a circus fate.
+
+Pa has an awful time in the hospital, 'cause twice a day the doctors
+strip him and pull a mess of cactus thorns out of him, and he yells and
+don't talk very pious. The doctor told me I must try and think of
+something to divert pa's mind from his suffering.
+
+So I got some telegraph blanks and envelopes, and I have written
+messages from the show managers, twice a day. The morning message would
+tell about the business of the day before, and how they missed pa. Then
+I would add something like this: "The farmers around Olathe are all
+inquiring for you," or "The farmers around Topeka wish you were here,
+'cause they want to give you a reception," or "About 200 farmers at
+Parsons think we ought to let them in free, on account of being old
+friends of yours." The last one broke pa all up. The message said: "Many
+farmers from Atchison are going to come with us to Kansas City to confer
+with you on an old matter of business." Pa jumped like a box car off the
+track, and wanted the doctors to send him to a hospital at St. Louis,
+and he told the doctors the reason, but they cheered him up by saying
+that if any mob came to the hospital after him, they would hide him in
+the pickling vat, and make the mob believe he was dead. That is the way
+it stands now. But pa is not so darn happy as I have seen him, though I
+try to do all I can to keep his mind off his trouble. I tell him as long
+as his conscience is clear, he is all right, but he says: "But, Hennery,
+that's the trouble; it ain't clear. Well, let us have peace, at any
+price."
+
+[Illustration: Pa Jumped Like a Box Car.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+    Pa Breaks in the Zebras and Drives a Six-in-Hand Team in the
+    Parade--The Freaks Have a Narrow Escape from Drowning.
+
+
+Pa is stuck on the zebras. I do not know what there is about a zebra
+unless it is the wail paper effects of his exterior decoration that
+should make a man leave all the other animals and cleave unto the zebra,
+but pa has been putting in his leisure time all summer breaking the
+zebras to harness, and driving them single and double in the ring
+Sundays.
+
+Everybody about the show knew pa was going to spring some surprise on
+us. I have tried to reason pa out of his unnatural infatuation for
+zebras, but you might as well talk to a rich old man who gets stuck on a
+chorus girl, and gives her all his money, and has to go and live at the
+poor house.
+
+A zebra always looks to me like a joke that nature has played. Who, but
+nature, would ever think of laying out a plan for a zebra, and painting
+it in stripes, like a barber's pole, and yet we must admit that few
+human artists could paint a million zebras and get the stripes on as
+perfect as nature does with her eyes shut. The mule and the zebra are
+distant relatives, 'cause lots of mules have a few stripes on their
+legs, but the zebra is the eldest son who is aristocratic and inherits
+the stuff, while the mule is the younger son who never gets a look in
+for the money, but has to work for a living. So it is no wonder to me
+that the mule kicks. The zebra is the dude of the family, and the mule
+looks up to him, when he ought to kick his slats in, and rub out his
+stripes with a mule shoe eraser.
+
+While pa was in the hospital at Kansas City he formed a plan to paralyze
+the town by driving six zebras to a tally-ho coach, in the parade, and
+the reporters interviewed pa, and the papers were full of it, and the
+people were wild with excitement, and everybody wanted to see a
+six-in-hand zebra team, driven by Alkali Ike, one of the greatest
+western stage drivers that was ever held up by road agents. Pa was to be
+Alkali Ike. The show struck Kansas City Sunday morning, and the
+management was scared at what pa had advertised to do, and they all
+wanted to call off the zebra stunt, but pa said if they cut it out the
+people would mob the show, so all day Sunday we hooked up the six
+zebras, and the hands led them around the tent with a mule with a bell
+on ridden in the lead. They seemed to go pretty well, but I could see
+pa's finish when he got out on the streets with that crazy team. Pa
+wanted all the freaks to ride on the tally-ho, and he had invited nine
+newspaper fellows to ride with him. Pa thought the zebra team would
+follow the bell mule ahead, like a 20-mule borax team would.
+
+Well, Monday morning the parade started, and along about the middle of
+the parade, just ahead of the calliope, was pa and his six zebra team,
+his freaks and reporters, and pa handled the ribbons like a pirate. The
+fat woman sat on the driver's seat with pa, for ballast, and the rest of
+the freaks were sandwiched in between the reporters. We went along all
+right for half a mile, the circus hands walking beside the zebras, to
+kill them if they tried to jump over a house, while I rode the bell
+mule. If I had been planning the zebra business, I would have picked out
+a level town to try it on, but Kansas City is all hills and ravines, and
+going up hill the zebras' tally-ho had to be pushed by a couple of
+elephants, 'cause the zebras wouldn't pull the load, and going down hill
+we had to lock the wheels, and slide down.
+
+When we got on the main street, where the crowd filled both sides,
+almost up to the team, and the people began to cheer, the zebras began
+to waltz and kick, and try to jump over each other, but the hands got
+them untangled, and we worried along, though pa was pale, and looked
+like a man smoking a cigar while sitting on an open powder keg. The fat
+woman grabbed pa every little while, and screamed that she wanted to get
+off and walk, but pa told her to hush up and try to be a man.
+
+Well, as we were going down hill, by a park, near the Midland hotel,
+that confounded calliope had got right up behind the tally-ho, and the
+organist cut her loose, with the tune: "A Life on the Ocean Wave." Every
+zebra jumped into the air, the brake footpiece escaped pa's foot, and
+the tally-ho run on to the heels of the wheel zebras, and it was all
+off. There never was such a runaway since the days of Ben Hur. Pa had
+presence of mind enough to make the fat lady get down off the seat, and
+he put his feet on her to hold her down, the crowd yelled, and our
+zebras run into the cage ahead, containing the behemoth of Holy Writ,
+and knocked off a hind wheel, and every wagon ahead was either tipped
+over or disabled. The people fairly went wild, thinking the runaway was
+a part of the show. The giant fainted from fright, 'cause he always was
+a coward; the bearded woman threw her arms around a reporter, and
+scratched his face with her whiskers, while the Circassian girl got her
+white wig caught In the branch of a tree and lost it, and she was as
+bald as an ostrich egg. Pa took out the whip and larruped the zebras, to
+put some new stripes on them.
+
+[Illustration: There Never Was Such a Runaway Since the Days of
+Ben-Hur.]
+
+When we passed the camels they thought they were in the race, and they
+buckled in to keep up, and the chariot horses got the best of the
+drivers and they joined in. My mule kept up all right, and we went down
+the hill on to the level ground that runs to the Missouri river. When we
+got to the river the zebras turned short and tipped the tally-ho over
+into the water and the whole bunch on the coach was floundering in the
+muddy water; but there happened to be a sandbar under the water, so
+nobody was drowned, though we had to bail out the fat woman, she
+swallowed so much of the muddy river. The giant was senseless and two
+reporters got astride of him, thinking it was a rail, and drifted
+ashore, while pa laid on his back and floated like a duck, and when we
+got him out we found he had a life-preserver under his coat, and he said
+he put it on because he had a hunch that those zebras would make for
+running water if they ever got beyond control. Well, the crowd followed
+down to the river, and everybody was rescued, and the rest of the parade
+went over the route, and in the afternoon the tent was so full there
+were thousands standing up.
+
+[Illustration: The Zebras Turned Short and Tipped the Tally-ho Over Into
+the Water.]
+
+When pa came into the main tent with the zebras, in the grand parade
+around the ring, the crowd gave him three cheers, which probably caused
+the management to refrain from discharging him on the spot. Pa is like a
+cat, 'cause he always falls on his feet all right and he thinks the
+zebra tally-ho in the parade was the feature that caused the crowd to
+visit the show; but he says he will never drive zebras again, on account
+of the excitement.
+
+The fat woman talks of having pa arrested for breaking one of her ribs
+when he held her down with his feet; but pa says his feet did not sink
+into her more than a foot or so, and he couldn't have hit a rib, nohow.
+
+Well, I'm glad to be back in the show, 'cause there is more going on
+than there was in the hospital, where I put in a week while the doctors
+were pulling the cactus pin feathers out of pa that grew out on him in
+Indian Territory. Gee, but if I had to leave the circus business and go
+back to school, I know I should die of lonesomeness.
+
+I got a chance to talk with pa at supper, and asked him if he was really
+crazy, as the hands say he is, and how he liked zebras, anyway, and he
+said: "Hennery, zebras are just people, they stampede just like
+politicians and bankers, and business men generally, and never know
+enough to let well enough alone. The mule is the only draft animal that
+always pulls straight and gets there right side up."
+
+If I was going to run a circus for easy money, and a picnic, I wouldn't
+have any menagerie connected with it, 'cause the animals make more
+trouble than all the rest of the show. They are just like a lot of
+children in a reform school, they don't want to work, and they are just
+looking for a chance to fight when your back is turned, or to escape.
+They don't know where they would go if they did escape, but they don't
+want anybody over them, to teach them morals, though when meal time
+comes the reform school boys and the menagerie animals eat like tramps,
+because the food is so good, and then kick because it isn't better. If
+your performers in the circus proper do not suit you can discharge them,
+and if they are sick you can leave them in a hospital, and go on with
+the show, and forget about them until they show up in a week or two,
+pale as ghosts, and weak as cats, and demand back salary; but your
+animal has to be taken along and petted, and when you give him medicine
+to save his life, he will try to bite your hand off.
+
+And yet you can't help getting stuck on the animals, and a man gets
+stuck on the kind of animal that is most like him. The grizzly old
+granger, who never buttons the collar of his shirt, and whose Adam's
+apple looks like a hen's head, will stay by the camels, hours at a time,
+the pious church man feels at home among the sacred cattle, the
+strong-arm holdup man will linger by the grizzly bear, the prize-fighter
+will haunt the lions' den, the garroter will gaze lovingly at the
+tigers, the sneak thief seems to love the hyenas, and the big game
+hunters watch the deer and elk. Some of us who have brains love the
+monkeys, they are so human.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+    The Rings Are So Muddy the Performers Have to Wear Rubber Boots--The
+    Freaks Present Pa with a Big Heart of Roses--The Show Closes and the
+    Bad Boy Starts West with His Pa in Search of Attractions for the
+    Coming Season.
+
+
+Well, Missouri is the state to teach a circus humility, and we have
+taken the thirty-third degree in the last ten days. It has rained nine
+days and a half out of a possible ten days, and the mud is something we
+never dreamed of before. The wagons have been mired in the mud on the
+way from the train to the lot every day in the streets of cities big
+enough to have street cars and electric lights. The cities have one or
+two main streets paved, but the rest of the streets are just virgin
+soil, and you have got to swim to get to the paved streets. When you
+start away for the lot, it is like Washington crossing the Delaware.
+
+And yet the people come from miles around to see the show, and everybody
+rides a web-footed mule, that can wallow in the mud. They hitch the
+mules to fences outside the tent, and while the performance is going on
+the mules bray in concert and drown the band.
+
+Pa has been wild ever since we struck Missouri, and no wonder, 'cause
+everybody seems to lay everything in the way of weather on him. Every
+place we show the lot is one sea of mud, and when we get the rings made
+they seem like a chain of lakes, and in galloping around the rings the
+horses splash mud and water clear to the reserved seats. The riders of
+the horses have to come out in rubber hunting boots and when they get on
+the horses we have to pull their boots off and hold them until the act
+is over, then the riders sit on the horses and pull the boots on and get
+down in the mud of the ring and bow to the audience.
+
+The woman riders are the worst to wear rubber boots, 'cause they fall
+down in the mud and spoil their dresses and kick scandalous, The trapeze
+performers have to be carried out of the dressing room on stretchers,
+and hoisted up to the net, 'cause they can't do stunts up on the trapeze
+with wet feet, and we have worked ourselves to death getting things in
+shape.
+
+The confounded elephants just glory in the mud, and the minute they get
+in the ring they all lay down and roll in the mud and water, so when
+they are ready to do their act they look like walking mud pies. The
+freaks are awful to handle, the giant being the only one that can wade
+through and look pleasant, and the fat woman would make you weary, she
+has to be carried back and forth to the platform by half a force of
+hands. Pa has had shawl straps and coffin handles fastened to her
+clothes, so there will be something to grab hold of to move her around.
+I don't think that another year we will have any fat woman, 'cause pa
+says it costs more to get this 500-pound female from one place to
+another than all the rest of the show. He thinks that people who visit
+the show don't care much about a fat woman anyway, but just guy her and
+ask her what kind of breakfast food she lives on. He thinks if we had
+three reasonably fat women that weighed about 200 pounds apiece, it
+would give better satisfaction and they would be easier to handle; but
+when she heard what pa said and felt that she was going to be shook next
+year she began to cry, and it was like turning on water in a bathtub. Pa
+had to pet her and then the bearded woman got jealous.
+
+At Jefferson City there came a cold wave and everything was froze stiff,
+and you could skate in the rings, and the management decided to get to
+St. Louis and send the show to winter quarters, and organize for next
+season. So we have had a time closing up for the season, and sending the
+animals to the barns on our farm up north, and discharging and paying
+off the performers and bidding everybody good-by. We have bought
+presents for everybody, and it has been a picnic.
+
+Pa had a big heart, with roses all around it, made of a horse collar,
+covered with flowers, which came from the freaks, and the performers
+remembered him with presents, and pa gave everybody something, and
+everybody got together in the main tent and made speeches.
+
+The manager thanked everybody and promised that next year we would have
+the greatest show on earth. He said the management had decided that what
+we lacked this year was a wild west show, as the people everywhere
+seemed to dote on busting broncos, and roping cattle, and chasing
+buffaloes and seeing Indians and rough riders chase up and down the
+arena. He felt that in justice to our rough-riding president, it was
+proper to have a wild west show that would make things hum next year. He
+said he took pleasure in informing the people of the show that pa had
+been commissioned to go out west at once and secure the Indians and
+cowboys, horses that buck and bounce off the riders, cattle that would
+stand it to be lassoed and thrown down for the amusement of the public,
+buffaloes that would bellow and act like old times on the plains, stage
+coaches and robbers, and he promised that next year they would have no
+cause to be ashamed of the show. He said pa was authorized to spare no
+expense to round up a wild west show second to none. The performers and
+hands cheered the manager, and then they yelled for pa for a speech.
+
+Pa got up on the tub that the elephants stand on, and said that it was
+true what the manager said about a wild west show, and that he was proud
+of the confidence reposed in him. He should be glad to take an
+expedition and go out into the far west and beard the wild west Indian
+in his tepee and engage Indians by the hundred to come with us next
+year. He would pierce the wilderness of the west in search of the
+wildest red men and would hunt the cowboy in his lair and secure those
+who could make the most trouble for cattle and horses and shoot up an
+audience if necessary to keep the peace, and he would buy buffaloes
+enough so every performer could ride one if he wanted to. He said while
+we had this year had some attempts at a wild west department in our
+show, it was only a tame imitation of what we would have next year, and
+he wanted them all to pray for him, that he might come out of the wild
+far west without being killed. He said he should take Hennery along with
+him as a mascot, and if the worst came he could trade me to an Indian
+tribe for ponies, or leave me as a hostage with some tribe until he
+returned the Indians at the close of next season. Pa closed his remarks
+by hoping that nothing had occurred during the past season that would
+cause anybody to have it in for him, 'cause he had tried to be impartial
+in his cussedness, and while he felt that he had been considered an
+interloper in the profession at first, he had found that everybody
+looked upon him later in the season as the main guy in the show, and
+that all had felt at liberty to give it to him in the neck on every
+proper occasion and he felt that he had taken his medicine like a
+thoroughbred.
+
+[Illustration: I Will Search for the Wildest of Red Men.]
+
+They gave three cheers for pa, and then they brought in the blankets and
+tossed everybody up until they lost everything out of their pockets and
+yelled that they had enough, and they wound up by tossing pa up in the
+blanket until he could see stars. They were going to give the fat woman
+a hoist, when the boss canvasman gave the signal to take down the tents,
+and all was in a hubbub for about 15 minutes.
+
+[Illustration: They Tossed Pa Up in the Blanket.]
+
+When everything was down and everybody went to the train, after joining
+hands around the middle ring and singing "Old Lang Sine," pa and I and
+the managers went to a hotel to organize our expedition to the far west
+in search of talent for a wild west show that shall be the greatest ever
+put under canvas. After all had gone away, and only pa and I and the
+managers were left, it seemed, as we thought over the incidents of the
+past season, as though there had been an earthquake and the whole show
+had been blotted out of existence.
+
+Pa choked up and was going to cry, and I got my throat full of something
+so I could not speak, and the managers began to wipe their eyes, and pa
+saved the day by saying: "Oh, what's the use, let's order up some
+highballs," and when they came, with a red lemonade for me, pa said:
+"Well, here's to the people that crowd around the ticket wagon and fight
+to get the first ticket when the window is open, and go away after the
+show and say it is the greatest show ever."
+
+"Hey Rube!" said the manager, and we drank standing, and pa went out and
+bought tickets for Cheyenne, and some beads, to give to the Indians we
+shall visit in the west.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus, by George W. Peck
+
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