and ran into the dressing-room. The audience just yelled, and pa blushed
scarlet, 'cause he saw it was a put-up job to make him ridiculous.

[Illustration: She Kicked Pa's Hat Off.]

During the chariot races pa had to jump like a box car to keep from
being run over by a four-horse chariot driven by a one-horse girl, and
the attendants dragged pa out from under a bunch of horses being ridden
barebacked, like fury. Then two horses hitched together with a strap
were being ridden by a woman, the strap broke and the horses spread
apart, and some one yelled that she had split clear in two. Pa rushed in
to help carry one half of her into the dressing-room, but she wasn't
hurt at all, 'cause the peanut boy told me she was a rubber woman, and
you could stretch her half way across the ring, and she would come
together all right, and eat a hearty meal. Gee, but a circus is a great
place to study human nature.

In the evening performance at Peoria there came up a windstorm which
blew down part of the menagerie tent, where the freaks were, and when
the storm was over, and the tent top was pulled up again, they found pa
all right. He started to crawl under the canvas, and skip out for fear
of the animals, but the fat lady caught him and sat down on him.

WITH THE CIRCUS

CHAPTER V.

The Rogue Elephant Creates a Panic and Pa Proves Himself a Hero--The
Bad Boy Gets Scolded for "Being Tough"--He Finds That Audiences Like
Accidents.

May 6.--We had the worst time at Akron last week and pa proved himself a
hero, though he was swatted good by the rogue elephant before he got his
second wind and went for the animal.

We have a male elephant that is almost human, 'cause he gets on a tear
about once a month, like a regular ugly husband. You can't tell when his
mind is in condition for running amuck, but suddenly he will whoop like
a drunken man, strike his poor patient wife over the back with his trunk
and grab her tail and try to pull it out by the roots, and jump up and
crack his heels together like a drunken shoemaker, and bellow as though
he was saying he was a bad man from Bitter Creek.

Well, at Akron, the keeper of this elephant, Bolivar, had to go and see
a girl that he met when the show was here last year, and settle a case
of breach of promise before a justice of the peace, and the boss told pa
to look after the elephant for an hour or so. So pa took a pole with a
hook in it and sat down on a bale