nd
night to catch the elephants, after the senator's boy and I turned the
rats and mice loose in the ring while the elephants were forming a
pyramid. Pa and all the circus hands had to go away down towards the
Bull Run battlefield to round them up, and young Mr. Senator let me ride
one of his ponies and he and I went along to help catch the elephants.

We went out through Alexandria towards Bull Run battlefield. There we
overtook pa and the boss canvasman and the elephant handler, and we met
some farmers coming into Alexandria with their families, stampeding like
people out west when the Indians go on the warpath. They had got up in
the morning to milk the cows and found about 20 elephants in the
barnyard, making the cows do a song and dance. Pa told them there was no
danger at all, 'cause he would take any elephant by the tail and snap
its head off, like boys snap the heads off garter snakes, and I told
them that me and the senator's boy stampeded the elephants and we could
drive them back to town like a drove of sheep.

[Illustration: We Met Some Farmers.]

The farmers thought we were great and they followed us back to the farm,
where we found the herd of elephants had taken possession and were
having the time of their lives. About a dozen of the big elephants had
found a couple of barrels of cider in a shed and had been drinking it,
and when we got there they were like section hands with jags on.

Bolivar, the big elephant, was the drunkest, and when he saw pa coming
with the gang of hands, with ropes and spears, he winked at the other
elephants and seemed to say: "Watch me tree 'em," for he came out of the
gate and bellowed, and made a charge at the gang, and pa beat them all
going up crab apple trees. The senator's son saw pa up a tree, and he
said: "Old gentleman, if these are your animals, or insects, or whatever
they are, you ought to come down off your perch and take them to a
Keeley cure, because they are intoxicated."

[Illustration: Old Gentleman, You Ought to Come Down Off Your Perch.]

And pa came down and took a fence rail and sharpened it with an ax, and
he run it into Bolivar about a foot, and Bolivar trumpeted for
surrender, and that settled the elephant strike, for pa ordered Bolivar
into the road, and in five minutes the whole herd of elephants was
following Bolivar back to Washington, as meek as a drunken husband being
led home by his wife.

Gee, what do you think? The president heard how the