that the clown had tied on, as they do in the circus. The
colonel rode up to me, and with a good deal of indignation, asked me
what I. meant by causing ourselves to become a spectacle for gods and
men on so solemn an occasion. He said he was tempted to have my horse
shot, and me placed in the guard-house. I told him I hoped to die if I
could help it. I said the horse seemed to be possessed to do some circus
business wherever he went. I confided to the colonel that the horse had
been a circus-horse before the war, and the music and tinsel, and crowd
that he saw, had turned his head and made him think that he was again
with his beloved circus, where he had spent the best years of his life.
The colonel said I ought to have known better than to bring a circus
horse to a funeral. Well, when the drum major got out of sight the horse
acted better, and we went along all right, the solemn music of the
march to the grave seeming to take the circus out of him. He didn't do
anything out of the way on the march, except to put out his fore-feet
stiff, and keep time to the music, like a trained circus horse, which
attracted a good deal of attention among the citizens on the street,
who seemed to know the horse. Just as we got out at che edge of town
he _did_ make one raw break. There was a colored drayman, with his dray
backed up towards the procession, and when my circus horse saw the dray,
before I could prevent him, he whirled around and put his fore feet
upon the hind end of the dray, put one foot on the top of a stake on the
dray, and stood there for a minute, like a horse statute, until I jerked
him down off of there.

[Illustration: Stood there for a minute, like a horse statute 297]

O, I was so mortified that my teeth fairly ached, and the perspiration
stood out on me in great beads. A staff officer of the general
commanding, came along to the colonel, presented the compliments of
the general, and asked if he could not do something to prevent that
redheaded clown on the spotted horse from doing any more circus acts
until after the last sad rites had been performed. The colonel said it
should be stopped, and told the start officer to present his compliments
to the general and say that he was humiliated beyond endurance by the
performance of the horse, but that the young man riding the horse
was not to blame, as he had done all in his power to keep the circus
tendencies of the horse down, but he added that he would have the ho