un, and how I had put anise
seed in the shoes of pa, the giant and the fat lady. Then you ought to
have seen what they did to me. The planter said they usually had a
lynching when the dogs made a run, but that was impossible in this case,
so he suggested that they make me run the gauntlet. I didn't know what
running the gauntlet was, but after pa had told me he should disown me
from that moment, I said I was willing to run any gauntlet, so they all
cut switches and formed in two lines, and let me run down between them.
I thought it would be fun, but when I started and every last man gave me
a cut across the end of my back with a hickory switch, I yelled murder,
and run between the giant's legs and tackled him like football I toppled
him over against the next man, and that man hit the giant in the
stomach, and everybody began to fight, and the festivities broke up.

[Illustration: I Yelled Murder and Ran Between the Giant's Legs.]

I went to the house with the boy and the dogs, and we set the dogs on a
mess of cats, and treed everything alive on the plantation. Finally the
whole crowd came back to the house and had another lunch, with mint
julep and champagne, and then everybody was hugging some one, and crying
on each other's neck, and swearing that the war was over, and that the
north and the south were one and inseparable, and the two together could
whip the whole world.

Pa somehow saw double. I was standing alone, smarting from the switching
I got, when pa came up to me and said: "I want you two boys to
understand that I don't want any more experiments played on me. I can
take a joke us well as anybody, but when you set a hundred dogs on my
trail, I am no gentlemen, see? Now we will go back to the show."

CHAPTER XX.

The Bad Boy Goes After a Mess of White Turnips for the Menagerie--He
Feeds the Animals Horseradish, but Gets the Worst of the Deal.

You can learn something new and interesting every day in a circus, and a
boy, particularly, can store his mind with useful knowledge, that will
be valuable to him in after years.

Gee, but I have learned some things that I could never have learned in
college, 'cause at college you only learn things that have to be
verified by actual experience in business. Pa says one year in the
circus will be better for me than ten years in a reform school. But I
learned something yesterday that made such an impression on me that I
will not be able to sit down com