e is sick and mad, and full of snuff, he is a fiend. One such
camel is enough for a man to handle, but when 14 camels are all sneezing
at once, and trying to locate the person that is responsible for their
trouble, it is the safest to keep away, and when pa went in amongst
them, with no shirt on, and the Arab keepers had run away in fright, it
was a dangerous thing to do.

But pa is brave even to rashness. He went up to Mahomet, the
double-humped leader of the herd, who was the leader of the sneezers,
and kicked him in the slats and told him to hush up his noise. He
clubbed him on the humps with a tent stake. Then there was a rebellion
in Egypt, and Mahomet bit pa, and wouldn't let go, and the other camels
sneezed all over pa, and had him down, walking on him with their padded
feet. The circus hands had to pull pa out, and it wasn't so bad, because
the crowd remained and they thought it was a part of the show, and that
the animals were trained to sneeze that way.

The worst case was the hippopotamus. He was so big, and had such big
nostrils, that I laid about half a pound of snuff on the side of his
tank, and when he snuffed it up his nose he got it all. I heard a howl
from the tank and the herd, who was the leader of the sneezers, and I
told pa to come on, 'cause Vessuvious was going to erupt.

Pa came on the run, just as he was, and then the worst happened. I think
the hippo went under water when he found the sneeze was coming, for just
as pa got to the tank the water flew into the air like a torpedo had
exploded under a battle-ship, and the hippo had sneezed all right and pa
and the audience which had followed him were drenched and deafened by
the explosion. The hippo had blown the water all out of his tank, and he
lay at the bottom, on his side, sneezing little sneezes not louder than
the report of a six-pound cannon, and panting for breath. Then he raised
his head, got up on his feet, and opened his mouth like a gash cut in a
steer by a cow catcher of an engine, and he yawned, and I guess he got
the lockjaw, 'cause he kept his mouth open all the afternoon to get the
air, like a soprano singer in a choir, who has been fed a cayenne pepper
lozenger by the tenor, just before she gets up to sing: "A Charge to
Keep, I Have."

We went around and inspected the sneezing animals with the manager, and
he complimented me by saying I had saved the show from becoming an
aggregation of stuffed animals, only fit for a taxiderm