r time of
life? For if you do I can never live to witness any such performances."

[Illustration: Pa Swatted Her on the Back.]

Pa was calm, and did not fly off the handle, but he just said, kindly:
"Mother, you have vague ideas of the duties of the owners of a circus.
The owners hire performers to do stunts, and break their necks, while we
manage them and take in the shekels from the Reubens who come into town
on circus day. We proprietors touch the button, and the actors and
animals do the rest. I shall be a director who directs, a man who sets a
dignified and pious example to the men and women who adorn the
profession, coming as they do from all climes, and your pa will be the
guide, philosopher and friend of all who belong to the grandest
aggregation of talent ever gathered under one canvas, at one price of
admission, and do not fail to witness the concert which will be given
under this canvas after the main performance is over."

Ma looked at pa pretty savage, and said: "O, I see, you are going to be
ringmaster, but what is to become of Hennery and me while you are
cracking your whip around the hind legs of the fat woman, and ogling the
Circassian beauty?"

Pa put his hand on my head and said: "Mother, Hennery will go with me,
to see that I do not get into any trouble as a circus financier and
general manager of the menagerie and Wild West aggregation, and
hippodrome, in the great three-ring circus, and you can stay home and
give us absent treatment for what ails us, and pack the money I shall
send you in bales with a hay press, and put it in cold storage till we
come back in the fall. It is settled, we go to conquer, and the world
will lay at our feet before the middle of August, and you will be a
proud woman to own a husband who will be pointed at as the most
successful amusement purveyor the world has ever witnessed, and a son
who will start in at the bottom round of the circus ladder and rise,
step by step, until he will stand beside the great Barnum."

Ma thought seriously for a few minutes, and then she said: "O, pa, if it
was anything but the circus business you and Hennery went into, like
selling soap or being a bank defaulter, or something respectable, I
could look the neighbors in the face, but of course if there is money in
it, and you feel that the good Lord has called you to the circus field,
and you will see that Hennery does not stay out nights, and Hennery will
promise to see that you put on a