"

I had sat with my mouth open while the president talked, and never said
a word, but when he quit I said: "Yes, but suppose when you got your
bear skun, another bear should come after you and dare you to knock a
chip off his shoulder, and growl, and walk sideways with his bristles
all up, would you run, or would you stand your ground?"

"We better change the subject," said the president, and rose from the
table, and we all got up. He patted me on the head, and said: "Tell your
pa I will see him later, and in the meantime, you run your circus and I
will try to run mine."

The queerest thing happened that night. The senator's boy spoke of our
trained seals, that catch a fish if you throw it to them and swallow it
whole. He said it would be fun to take a little alarm clock and sew it
up in a fish, and set the alarm at seven o'clock p. m., when the crowd
is watching the seals swallow fish, and throw it to the big seal, and
the alarm would go off inside him.

Well, I bit like a bass, and said we would do it, so he took a little
alarm clock and set it for seven o'clock. We got it into a fish, and I
am ashamed to tell what happened. Gee, but that seal grabbed the fish
with a clock in it, and tried to swallow it, but the brass ring caught
on one of his teeth, and he was trying to get it loose when the alarm
went off, and the seal jumped out of the tank and began to prance around
the crowd, scaring the women, and making all the animals nervous. He
stood on his head and bellowed, and all the circus hands came rushing
up. Finally the alarm clock quit jingling, and they caught the seal and
pulled the clock off his tooth, and just then pa came up to me and said:
"What deviltry you boys up to now? Suppose that seal had swallowed that
clock, and you couldn't wind it up; it might kill him. Now, go to the
car, 'cause we are going to get out of this town right off. You make me
tired." And pa helped to lift the slippery seal into the tank, and
looked mad at his little boy, and hurt the feelings of the senator's
boy.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Show Strikes Virginia and the Educated Ourang Outang Has the
Whooping Cough--The Bad Boy Plays the Part of a Monkey, but They
Forget to Pin on a Tail.

Well, I have broke the show all to pieces, just by not being able to
stand grief. Everything is all balled up, the managers are sore at me,
and afraid of being sent to jail, and pa thinks I ought to be mauled.

It was this wa