a leg or so. In the morning he found out that someone had sawed
a leg of the bedstead nearly all the way through, and, of course, he
knew that the Dwarf had done it. But you couldn't prove anything against
the Dwarf. He would always swear that he never had any hand in the
accidents, and there was never any evidence against him that anybody
could get hold of. I didn't mind what games he played on the Giant as
long as the Giant wasn't made to break anything that would lay him on
the shelf, and I told the Dwarf that I was the last man to interfere
with any man's innocent amusements, but that in case the Giant happened
to break a leg, I should go out of the Giant and Dwarf business at once.
But that didn't scare him a particle. He knew that he was worth his
salary in any Dime Museum in America, and more than that, he had money
enough laid up in the bank to live on, assuming, of course, that he
could draw it out before the cashier should bolt to Canada with it. So
he was as independent as you please, and told me that if I chose to hold
him responsible for other people's legs he couldn't help it, and had
nothing to say about it.

"At that time I had a Female Samson. She wasn't the Combined Female
Contortionist and Strongest Woman in the World that is in my show at
present, but she was in about the same line of business. These Strong
Women are all genuine, you understand. You can embellish them a little
on the handbills, and you can announce that the cannon that the Strong
Woman fires from her shoulder weighs a hundred or two pounds more than
it actually weighs; but unless a Strong Woman is really strong and no
mistake, she might as well try to pass herself off as a Living Skeleton
or a Two-Headed Girl at once. The fact is, the great majority of Freaks
are genuine, and the business is a thoroughly honest one at bottom. Why,
if you told the exact truth in the handbills about every Freak in my
show, barring the Tattooed Girl and the Wild Man, they would still
constitute a good drawing attraction in any intelligent community.

"This Female Samson was a good sort of woman in her way, though she was
a little rough and a bit what you might call masculine in her ways. She
didn't like the Dwarf, and he didn't like her.

[Illustration: "SHE PULLED HIM OVER TO HER BY HIS COLLAR."]

"The Freaks were all at supper one night when the Dwarf said something
insulting to the Female Samson. He sat right opposite to her, and she
just reached