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!"



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.



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."



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.



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."



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.



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.



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.



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."



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.



The hornets got busy and went for the elephants and the Japanese jugglers, and they 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.



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.



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.



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.



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."



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.



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.



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.