the
cages were coming whooping, and it was a picnic. The band stopped
playing, and the players were scared, and as we were crossing a little
bridge over a small stream, on the edge of town, I turned around to the
band and told them to jump for their lives, and they all made a jump for
the stream, and the air was full of uniforms and instruments, and they
landed in the stream all right.

We went on up a hill, and were in the country, and the farmer turned
into a farmyard, and the band wagon followed, and the farmer jumped off
the corn stalk wagon and rushed for the house, and pa's ten-horse team
surrounded the wagon, and every horse was eating corn stalks, and the
team was all mixed up. The camels and the elephants crowded in for the
nice green lunch, and the farmer's wife came out with her apron waving,
and said "Shoo," but none of the animals shooed worth a cent, and pa
pulled on the lines, and yelled, while the rest of the parade came into
the farm and lined up. The drivers yelled at pa to know where in thunder
he was going, and pa said: "Damfino."

Just then the manager and chief of police came up, and the way they
talked to pa was awful. Pa couldn't explain how it was that he took the
parade out in the country, and you never saw such a time.

By this time the regular drivers had arrived on a special, from where we
left them with a hot box, and they took possession of the teams, and we
got back to the circus lot in time for the afternoon performance. I
don't know what they are doing to pa, but they had him in the manager's
tent all the afternoon with some doctors, who seem to be examining him
for insanity.

Everybody about the show thinks pa has hoodooed the aggregation, but pa
says such things are always happening, and it is wrong to blame him.

The farmer got paid for his corn stalks, and it is to be charged up to
pa.

CHAPTER XI.

The Bad Boy and His Pa in a Railroad Wreck--Pa Rescues the "Other
Freaks"--They Spend the Night on a Meadow--A Near-Sighted Claim
Agent Settles for Damages--Pa Plays Deaf and Dumb and Gets Ten
Thousand.

It has come at last.

Everybody about the show expects that the show has got to have a
railroad wreck every season, and all hands lay awake nights on the cars
to brace themselves for the shock. Sometimes it comes early in the
season, and again a show goes along until almost the end of the season
without a shake-up, and fellows think maybe there is not