Of course, the first night out is always the worst on a sleeper, and the
poor woman is nervous, and when the animal train, in the second section,
ran on a side track beside our train of sleepers, and Rajah, the boss
lion, got woke up and exploded one of his roars, within six feet of the
fat woman's berth, she just gave one yell, and reared up, and came down
hard in the berth. Something broke, and she went right through the
bottom of the berth to the floor, doubled up like a jackknife.

Pa got up and went to her berth, though I told him to keep away, 'cause
he would get into trouble. First he stumbled over one of her shoes, and
said he thought he had told everybody to keep their telescope valises in
the baggage car, and that made her mad. Then he reached in the berth and
got hold of one of her feet, and pa got the men to help and they got her
out, but she seemed all squshed together. She sat up all night and
wanted to lean on pa, but the skeleton kept his head over the rail of
the upper berth and his snake-like eye never left pa all night.

The bearded woman got up out of her berth about daylight, to go to the
toilet room for a shave, or a hair cut, or something, and when she saw
pa trying to soothe the fat woman and hold her from breaking in two, she
screamed and slapped pa's face, and had a mess of hysterics. The fat
woman grabbed a couple of handfuls of female whiskers, and was going to
pull them out by the roots, when the bearded woman begged her not to
pull them out, as to lose her whiskers would destroy her means of
livelihood.

Then the bugle blew for everybody to get up and go to the show lot, and
put up the tents for the first show of the season. When we got out of
the sleeper we asked where we were, and a man told pa we were at Peoria,
Ill., and he wanted pa to give him a complimentary ticket for telling
what town we were in, but pa looked fierce at the man and asked what
kind of an easy mark he took him for, and the man slunk away. You
wouldn't think they could unload those two trains of cars, about 80 in
all, in a week, but when we got out the horses were hitched on the
wagons, and in 15 minutes they were loaded and on the way to the lot,
and pa and I got on the first wagon.

Talk about system. The surveyors were there ahead of us, and had
measured off the lot and pushed wire stakes in the ground where the grub
tent was to be, and when the first wagon of the grub outfit arrived,
which contained a big ran