to get him behind the scenes one night,
and another supe wanted to go to the sparring match, and I thought it
wouldn't be any harm to work my teacher in, so I got him a job that
night to hold the dogs for the Uncle Tom's show. He was in one of the
wings holding the chains, and the dogs were just anxious to go on, and
it was all my teacher could do to hold them. I told him to wind the
chains around his wrists, and he did so, and just then Eliza began to
skip across the ice, and we sicked the blood hounds on before my teacher
could unwind the chains from his wrists, and the dogs pulled him right
out on the stage, on his stomach, and drawed him across, and he jerked
one dog and kicked him in the stomach, and the dog turned on my teacher
and took a mouthful of his coat tail and shook it, and I guess the dog
got some meat, anyway the teacher climbed up a step ladder, and the dogs
treed him, and the step ladder fell down, and we grabbed the dogs
and put some court plaster on the teacher's nose, where the fire
extinguisher peeled it, and he said he would go home, cause the theater
was demoralizing in its tendencies."

[Illustration: The Sunday School Teachers first appearance on stage 140]

"I spose it was not right, but when the teacher stood up to hear our
Sunday School lesson the next day, cause he was tired where the dog bit
him, I said 'sick-em,' in a whisper, when his back was turned, and he
jumped clear over to the Bible class, and put his hands around to his
coat tail as though he thought the Uncle Tom's Cabin party were giving
a matinee in the church. The Sunday school lesson was about the dog's
licking the sores of Lazarus, and the teacher said we must not confound
the good dogs of Bible time with the savage beasts of the present day,
that would shake the daylights out of Lazarus and make him climb the
cedars of Lebanon quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and go off
chewing the cud of bitter reflection on Lazarus' coat tail. I don't
think a Sunday school teacher ought to bring up personal reminiscences
before a class of children, do you? Well, some time next fall you put
on a clean shirt and a pair of sheet iron pants, with stove legs on the
inside, and I will take you behind the scenes to see some good moral
show. In the meantime, if you have occasion to talk with Pa, tell him
that Booth, and Barrett, and Keene commenced on the stage as supes, and
Salvini roasted peanuts in the lobby of some theater. I want ou