he big game
hunters watch the deer and elk. Some of us who have brains love the
monkeys, they are so human.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Rings Are So Muddy the Performers Have to Wear Rubber Boots--The
Freaks Present Pa with a Big Heart of Roses--The Show Closes and the
Bad Boy Starts West with His Pa in Search of Attractions for the
Coming Season.

Well, Missouri is the state to teach a circus humility, and we have
taken the thirty-third degree in the last ten days. It has rained nine
days and a half out of a possible ten days, and the mud is something we
never dreamed of before. The wagons have been mired in the mud on the
way from the train to the lot every day in the streets of cities big
enough to have street cars and electric lights. The cities have one or
two main streets paved, but the rest of the streets are just virgin
soil, and you have got to swim to get to the paved streets. When you
start away for the lot, it is like Washington crossing the Delaware.

And yet the people come from miles around to see the show, and everybody
rides a web-footed mule, that can wallow in the mud. They hitch the
mules to fences outside the tent, and while the performance is going on
the mules bray in concert and drown the band.

Pa has been wild ever since we struck Missouri, and no wonder, 'cause
everybody seems to lay everything in the way of weather on him. Every
place we show the lot is one sea of mud, and when we get the rings made
they seem like a chain of lakes, and in galloping around the rings the
horses splash mud and water clear to the reserved seats. The riders of
the horses have to come out in rubber hunting boots and when they get on
the horses we have to pull their boots off and hold them until the act
is over, then the riders sit on the horses and pull the boots on and get
down in the mud of the ring and bow to the audience.

The woman riders are the worst to wear rubber boots, 'cause they fall
down in the mud and spoil their dresses and kick scandalous, The trapeze
performers have to be carried out of the dressing room on stretchers,
and hoisted up to the net, 'cause they can't do stunts up on the trapeze
with wet feet, and we have worked ourselves to death getting things in
shape.

The confounded elephants just glory in the mud, and the minute they get
in the ring they all lay down and roll in the mud and water, so when
they are ready to do their act they look like walking mud pies. The