t pa convinced her that we would have preaching in the
main tent every Sunday and he says there is no more pious lot of people
on earth than those who travel with a circus, and then ma wanted to go
along. She said she could do the mending of the long socks that the
women wear when they ride barebacked, but we had to shut down on ma's
going with the show, cause we never could have any fun with a woman to
look after. Pa says nowadays the men and women who ride on bareback
horses in the ring dress in regular evening costume, the women with
low-necked dresses and long trains, and the men with swallow-tail coats
and patent leather shoes, and they are as polite as dancing masters.

We have compromised with ma, and she is to meet the show at Kalamazoo
and go with us to Kankakee and Keokuk until she is overcome by nervous
prostration, when we shall have her go home. Pa thinks ma would last
about two days with the show, but I guess if she took a course of
treatment with peanuts and red lemonade one afternoon and evening, she
would want to throw up her job, and go back home in charge of a stomach
specialist.

Well, pa showed up at the house in his circus clothes this afternoon,
and he certainly is a peach. Pa has been letting his chin whiskers grow
for about six weeks, and today he had them colored black, and he looks
as though he had swallowed the blacking brush, and left the bunch of
bristles outside, on his chin. He looks fierce. Then, he has got a new
brand of silk hat, with a wide, curling brim, and he has had a vest made
of black and blue check goods, the checks as big as the checks on a
checker board, and a pair of pants that look like a diamond-back
rattlesnake, and he has got an imitation diamond stud in his white shirt
that looks like a paper weight.

Ma wanted to know if there was any law to compel pa to dress like that,
'cause he looked as though he was a gambler or a train robber. Pa says
that a circus proprietor has got to look different from anybody else, in
order to inspire fear and respect on the part of the hands around the
show, as well as the audiences that flock to the arena, and he asked ma
if she didn't remember old Dan Rice, and old John Robinson. Ma didn't
remember them, but she remembered Barnum, because Barnum lectured on
temperance, and she said she hoped pa would emulate Barnum's example,
and pa said he would, and then he took a watch chain with links as big
as a trace chain and spread it across his