son and never had one of our own men stung. I said we took some
assafoetida and rubbed it on our clothes and faces, and the hornets
wouldn't touch us, but just went for the other fellows to beat the band.
Say, negroes are easy marks. You can make them believe anything. But if
I ever get to be president I am going to appoint my negro assistant to a
position in my cabinet, 'cause he is the greatest political organizer I
ever saw. He rounded up over 200 cotton pickers and negro men who work
in the freight depots once in a while and started them out after
hornets' nests. He gave them some change to get a drink, and promised
them free passes into the show next night, and the next morning they
showed up with hornets' nests enough to scare you. They put them in a
dark place in the barn, so the hornets wouldn't get curious and want to
come out of the nests before they got their cue.

That afternoon we fitted them into the Chinese lanterns, and tied sticks
on the lanterns and fixed the candles, and when night came there were
more negroes than I could use, But I told them to follow along, and the
door tender would let them in, and all they need to do was to yell for
Teddy when I did, and so we marched to the main tent about the time the
performance got to going. I saw pa with his gang of white men go into
the dressing room at about the same time. The manager had timed it for
us to come in about 8:30, into the main tent, when the elephants were in
their pyramid act, so my crowd of negroes stopped in the menagerie tent
half an hour waiting to be called.

I wish I wasn't so confounded curious, but I suppose I was born that
way. I took one of the Chinese lanterns that was not lighted and just
thought I would like to see what the hyenas and the big lion, who were
in the same cage, with an iron partition between them, would do if a
Chinese lantern was put in the cage, so I got the fellow that watches
the cage to open up the top trap door, and I dropped a Chinese lantern
with a hornets' nest in it right between the two hyenas. Gee, but you
ought to have seen them pounce on it, and bite it and tear it up, and
then the hornets woke up, and they didn't do a thing to that mess of
hyenas. The hyenas set up a grand hailing sign of distress, and howled
pitiful, and the lion raised up his head and looked at them through the
bars as though he was saying, in a snarling way, "What you grave robbers
howling about? Can't you keep still and let the c