ts got busy and went for the elephants and the Japanese
jugglers, and they stampeded like they never met a hornet before.

[Illustration: The Stampeded Like They Never Met a Hornet Before.]

The female tumblers found hornets on their stockings, and everywhere,
and they gave a female war whoop and rushed for the dressing room. The
elephants got stung and they came down off their pyramid and went out to
the menagerie tent trumpeting, and switching their trunks. The negroes
and the white politicians were getting into a race war, so the circus
hands rushed in and separated them, and my negroes found that the fetty
I had them rub on themselves did not keep the hornets from stinging
them, so they stampeded.

Then the hornets began to go for the audience, and the women yelled
murder and pulled down their dresses to cover their shoes, and the men
got stung and the whole audience stampeded into the open air.

Then I met pa, and he was a sight, and I never got stung once. The
managers tried to get the band to play some tune that would soothe and
hold the audience till an explanation could be made, but somebody had
thrown a hornets' nest under the band seats and the horn players got
stung on the lips so they couldn't play, and the band all lit out for a
beer garden. Before I realized it the show was over, and a detective
that detects for the show had me collared and brought me up before a
meeting of the managers. Pa was the prosecuting attorney, and told them
that I didn't run my politics fair, 'cause I had brought in a lot of
ringers. The managers asked me how the hornets' nests came to be in the
Chinese lanterns. I told them they would have to ask the negroes for how
was I to know what weapons they had concealed about their persons, any
more than pa was responsible if his politicians carried revolvers.

They said that looked reasonable, but they believed I knew more about it
than anybody, but as we had to pack up the show and make the next town
they wouldn't lynch me till the next day. Pa got me to put cold cream on
his stings, and then he said, "Hennery, you are the limit."

CHAPTER XXII.

The Show Does Poor Business in the South--Pa Side Tracks a Circus
Car Filled with Creditors--A Performance Given "For the Poor," Fills
the Treasury--A Wild West Man Buncoes the Show.

Gee, but this show has been up against it the last week. We haven't made
a paying stand anywhere. The show business is all right when