was full of baggage, seats, tent pins and white
hats, guns were fired, and blood flowed, and the police pulled
everybody, and the evening performance was given up.

One of the proprietors of the show got a wen on his head as big as a
football from being struck by a handle of a revolver, and the colonel
who started the row was knocked silly by a tray of red lemonade which
the butcher smashed him with, and the colonel cried because the lemonade
was all water, and he was afraid it would soak into him and cause him to
warp. When the lemonade butcher apologized, and the usher told him it
was all a mistake his being seated with the niggers, the colonel wept on
their necks and invited the whole crowd to go to his distillery and help
themselves.

When we got to the next town every man in the show had a grouch and a
Katzenjammer, and their hair was so sore it was murder and suicide
combined to comb it.

The way pa escaped injury was 'cause he had to take the place of the fat
woman on the platform with the freaks, as the fat woman was overcome
with the heat and had to stay in the car.

The way they fixed pa up to resemble the fat woman was scandalous. They
have some rubber things in the wardrobe tent that you can blow up and
make a big arm, and a big leg, and a big stummick, so anybody couldn't
tell the difference, and they fixed pa up with blowed up clothes of
flesh colored rubber, and but for his chin whiskers you couldn't tell
him from the fat woman. He said he wouldn't cut off his whiskers for
anybody's circus, so they fixed a veil to cover part of his face and put
the fat woman's dress on pa, and put him up beside the skeleton, the
midget and the giant.

Pa said he didn't want to do it, 'cause it seemed too much like fraud,
but they told him the fate of the show depended on our all being willing
to take any part assigned to us, and so pa sat down and began to fan
himself, and tried to look flirty like a woman.

The other freaks never noticed but what it was the fat woman until the
show was half over. It was too much for me, and I just laffed at pa. I
got up behind him and told him in a whisper that I wanted a dollar to
play the slot machine, and he told me to go to thunder, and get out of
there. I couldn't stand it to be insulted by my own father, so I took a
hat pin out of the hat of the bearded lady and punched it into pa's
blowed up rubber shirt, and pa began to sis, like a soda fountain, and
the wind struck the l