animals, and see how they digested their food. The
first animal to open up the chorus was the hippopotamus, 'cause we gave
him about four quarts of horseradish on account of his mouth, and he
swallowed it at one mouthful. First he looked as though he felt hurt,
and stopped chewing, and seemed to be thinking, like a horse that wakes
up in the night with colic, and raises the whole family to sit up with
him all night and pour things down his neck out of a long-neck bottle.
The hippo held his breath for about a minute, and then he opened his
mouth so you could drive a wagon in, and gave the grand hailing sign of
distress, and said: "Wow, wow, wow," as plain as a man could. Then he
rolled over into his tank and yelled "murder," and wallowed around, and
stood on his head, till one of the keepers went in the cage to try to
soothe him. He chased the keeper out, and the crowd that had just begun
to come in fell back in terror.

There was quite a crowd around the camels watching them peacefully chew
their cuds, as they do at evening on the dessert, and the Arabs who had
charge of the camels were standing around, posing as though they were
the whole thing, when the old black, double-hump camel got his quart of
horseradish down into one of his stomachs, as he was kneeling down on
all fours. He yelled: "O, mamma," and got up on all his feet, and
kicked an Arab off a prayer rug, and bellowed and groaned. Then the rest
of the herd of camels seemed to have swallowed their dose, and they made
Rome howl. This scared the people over to where the sacred cattle were
trying to set a pious example to the rest of the animals by their meek
and lowly conduct.

[Illustration: The Camel Kicked an Arab Off a Rug.]

The sacred cow got her horseradish first, and I could see she was trying
to hold it without giving the snap away, till her husband, the bull, got
his. Well, it was pitiful, and I made up my mind I would never play a
joke on the sacred cattle again, 'cause it seems like sacrilege. The
bull finally got his horseradish down, and he was the most astonished
animal I ever saw. He swelled up, and then bellowed until the cow looked
as though she would sink through the ground, saying; "Excuse me, dear,
but I am not to blame, because I, too, have a hot box." The bull acted
just as human as could be, 'cause he looked mad at her, and was going to
gore her to death, when pa and some of the hands came up and hit him
with a tent stake, and swore at