s, or a
truly good bank cashier who teaches Sunday school, and skips out for
Canada some Saturday night, after the bank closes, and on Monday morning
they find the combination of the lock on the safe changed, and when they
hire a reformed burglar to open the lock the money is all gone with the
cashier. Those are the only people that ever kept a successful diary.

But I had to promise ma that I would keep a diary, so she could read it,
or I never could have got her consent for me to go with pa on the road
with a circus. All ma asks of me is to tell the truth about everything
that happens to me and to pa during the whole summer, and I have
consented, and I can see my finish, and pa's finish and ma's finish, and
the finish of the circus that is going to take us along.

Gee, but we have had a hot time at our house since pa and I got back
from our trip abroad. I brought pa back in better health than he was
when he went away, but he has got so accustomed to excitement that I
knew something would be doing pretty soon, so I was not surprised when
he told us at the breakfast table that he supposed he should have to go
and travel with a circus this summer.

Ma looked at pa as though she wanted to call the police and am ambulance
to take him to the emergency hospital. He looked at ma and at me,
speared another waffle, and said: "I know you will think I am nutty, but
for almost ten years I have had a block of stock in a circus and
menagerie. I went into it to help some young circus fellows, and put up
quite a bunch of money, because they were honest and poor, and for a few
years things went wrong, and I thought my money was gone, but for the
last six years the circus has paid dividends bigger than Standard Oil,
and today it stands away up among the financial successes, and the
dividends on my citrus stock is better than any bank stock I have got,
and it comes just like finding money. The company decided at its annual
meeting to invite me to take the position of one of the managers, and I
shall soon go to the winter quarters of the show, to arrange to put it
on the road about the 1st of May. Now any remarks may be made, pro or
con, in regard to my sanity, see?"

Well, ma swallowed something crosswise down her Sunday throat, and
choked, and pa swatted her on the back so she would cough it up, and
when she could speak she said: "Pa, do you have to wear tights, and jump
through hoops on the back of a horse, and cut up didoes, at you