Masons, and he guessed he could tell a
degree from a train wreck, 'cause the degree was a darn sight worse than
a wreck, but the conductor took one of those long glass fire
extinguishers and sprinkled the medicated water on the freaks in the
next berth, and then turned it on pa, and pa tasted it, and thought he
was at a banquet, and he said "that sauterne is not fit to drink."

Then when the bearded woman yelled that the fire had almost reached her
whiskers, and would nobody save her, pa began to get ready to move on,
'cause he concluded he hadn't been riding a goat after all, and he told
me to hand him his pants. Pa is a man that will never go out among
people, no matter how dark the night is, without his pants, and I admire
him for it. Some of the circus men didn't care for dress that night, but
got out just as they were, and the result was that when daylight came
they had to tie hay around their legs.

Our car was bottom-side up, but I found pa's pants and he got his legs
in, and I buttoned him in, but I felt all the time as though I had
buttoned them in the back, so the seat was in front, but the fire was
crackling and pa pushed me out of a transom, and then he crawled out,
and we sat down in the mud.

The bearded woman came next, with her whiskers done up in curl papers,
and then the fat woman got one foot through the transom, and she
couldn't get it back in, and the train hands got an ax and were going to
cut her leg off, and save one foot, at least, when pa got a move on him,
and took the ax and broke out the side of the car, and got her out.
Eight or nine men lifted her tenderly onto a stack of hay, and she
wrapped it around her, 'cause she left her clothes in her berth.

[Illustration: Pa Got an Ax and Cut the Fat Woman Out.]

Well, it was a sight when the people were got out of our car, and they
let it burn, to light up the scene, and pa and I and the boss canvasman
went along the ditched train, and helped people out. The giant was in
two upper berths, and he got one leg out of the transom over one berth,
and one leg out of the transom over the other berth, and we pulled his
legs, but he couldn't make it, so pa took an ax and made both berths
into one, and got him out.

The giant shook himself and started on a run across the marsh, but he
mired up to his neck, and a farmer who heard the noise came to order us
off his hay field for trespass, and yelled: "Here's a head of some of
your performers cut off aw