JIB JAB, IS HE HUMAN?
Jiminy crinkums, I may be a nut (that's what the troop calls me anyway),
but I'm not a freak and, believe me, when I saw who I was going to have
dinner with that day--_good night!_
They all sat around a big mess board that stood on horses just like at
Temple Camp. It was in a side tent. Judge Dot sat right next to me, he was
a midget. I guess he was only about three feet high, and he had a special
chair. On the other side of me was Lieutenant Lemuel Long; he was the thin
man. He was about as fat as a clothes pole. He didn't eat much, but it
wasn't because he didn't have any appetite. He said he had a contract with
Mr. Costello not to eat much, because that would make him fat. He said he
had a contract not to weigh more than eighty pounds. Gee, you've got to
keep a contract if you make one, that's one thing.
But anyway, Madame Whopper could eat all she wanted to; she was the fat
lady. She was a marvelous mammoth-that's what it said under the picture.
She ate nine pieces of pie. I ate four, but anyway, she was a professional.
They kept bringing her more pie. Judge Dot said once she ate eleven pieces.
I liked Judge Dot, because he said he was sorry about Marshal Foch. He gave
me his picture with his name on. He said if it was anyone else but me, it
would cost a quarter.
Illustration #3 "He took the fur right off his head"
But anyway, the one I liked best was Jib Jab, is he human? He had fur just
like a bear, but a head like a man, only his face was brown and it had
long hair on it. His face didn't look exactly like a man and it didn't look
exactly like animal. First I was kind of scared, because in the pictures
he was in a cage and he was grabbing hold of the bars and glaring awful
fierce and wild. And, gee whiz, I didn't want to eat dinner with a wild
animal. Oh boy, didn't I have a good scare when I saw him coming to the
table!
He jumped over the board seat and sat down right opposite me and took the
fur right off his Head, just as if he was scalping himself and laid it on
the ground. He looked more like a man then.
He looked across arid said to me, "Hello, old top, how are they treating
you?"
I said, "I'm feeling pretty well."
"Going into the parade, I hear," he said.
"That was quite a stunt you pulled. You'd never catch me like that if I
once broke loose. Think you could?"
I said, "Maybe I couldn't, but anyway, I guess you're human, all right."
Then he began to laugh and said to the thin man, "How goes it, Skinny; you
going to ride?"
I guess he meant the parade. The fat woman said, "I wouldn' do no ridin'
fer no proprietor, not me. The public has got to come to _me;_ I wouldn'
never go to _them."_'
Jib Jab said, "All in the game."
Judge Dot said, "It's different with you, Jib; you ain't human and you
can't say for yourself. You're in the menagerie class. You got to ride in
your cage. You ain't a regular freak. I never heard of no parade work in a
freak contract."
Madame Whopper said, "I wouldn' do parade work fer no proprietor, ride or
walk, I wouldn' not even Barnum hisself, I wouldn'."
Jib Jab said for me to pass him the butter and then he winked at me and he
said, "You're too particular, Ma. Parade work is all right. I like
parade work, except I can't smoke. How about it, Kid?"
I said I didn't mind being in a parade, but I wouldn't want to ride in a
cage like he had to do.
He laughed and said it was all in the game. He said if he ever broke out of
that cage, I'd never capture him until he came back for his money on
Saturday night.
I said "Sometimes boy scouts find people; sometimes they hunt for people
that are lost. In our magazine there's always a notice if a scout is lost
and all the scouts are on the look out for him."
"Yes, but those people are human," he said.
I said, "Gee whiz, I can't deny that."
"You never hunted for a _what-is-it,_ did you?" he asked, awful funny like.
I told him, "No, I never did, but once a troop of scouts found a girl that
was lost on a mountain, and there was another troop that found a fellow
just from seeing his name in the newspapers."
He said, "You're a wide awake bunch, you kids. They don't have any boy
scouts in the jungle where I was captured alive. If you ever get on my
trail, I'd give you a run all right."
I asked him where that jungle was where he was captured alive, and he said
it was on Washington Avenue in the Bronx.
He was an awful nice fellow.