We ought always to be useful, and do good to everybody. I used to think
that we ought always to improve our minds, and I think so some now,
though I have got into dreadful difficulties all through improving my
mind. But I am not going to be discouraged. I tried to be useful the
other day, and do good to the heathen in distant lands, and you wouldn't
believe what trouble it made. There are some people who would never do
good again if they had got into the trouble that I got into; but the
proverb says that if at first you don't succeed, cry, cry again; and
there was lots of crying, I can tell you, over our rhinoceros, that we
thought was going to do so much good.
It all happened because Aunt Eliza was staying at our house. She had a
Sunday-school one afternoon, and Tom McGinnis and I were the scholars,
and she told us about a boy that got up a panorama about the _Pilgrim's
Progress_ all by himself, and let people see it for ten cents apiece,
and made ten dollars, and sent it to the missionaries, and they took it
and educated mornahundred little heathens with it, and how nice it
would be if you dear boys would go and do likewise and now we'll sing
"Hold the Fort."
Well, Tom and I thought about it, and we said we'd get up a menagerie,
and we'd take turns playing animals, and we'd let folks see it for ten
cents apiece, and make a lot of money, and do ever so much good.
We got a book full of pictures of animals, and we made skins out of
cloth to go all over us, so that we'd look just like animals when we had
them on. We had a lion's and a tiger's and a bear's and a rhinoceros's
skin, besides a whole lot of others. As fast as we got the skins made,
we hung them up in a corner of the barn where nobody would see them. The
way we made them was to show the pictures to mother and to Aunt Eliza,
and they did the cutting out and the sewing, and Sue she painted the
stripes on the tiger, and the fancy touches on the other animals.
Our rhinoceros was the best animal we had. The rhinoceros is a lovely
animal when he's alive. He is almost as big as an elephant, and he has a
skin that is so thick that you can't shoot a bullet through it unless
you hit it in a place that is a little softer than the other places. He
has a horn on the end of his nose, and he can toss a tiger with it till
the tiger feels sick, and says he won't play any more. The rhinoceros
lives in Africa, and he would toss 'most all the natives if it wasn't
that they fasten an India-rubber ball on the end of his horn, so that
when he tries to toss anybody, the horn doesn't hurt, and after a while
the rhinoceros gets discouraged, and says, "Oh, well, what's the good
anyhow?" and goes away into the forest. At least this is what Mr.
Travers says, but I don't believe it; for the rhinoceros wouldn't stand
still and let the natives put an India-rubber ball on his horn, and they
wouldn't want to waste India-rubber balls that way when they could play
lawn-tennis with them.
Last Saturday afternoon we had our first grand consolidated exhibition
of the greatest menagerie on earth. We had two rows of chairs in the
back yard, and all our folks and all Tom's folks came, and we took in a
dollar and sixty cents at the door, which was the back gate.
I was a bear, first of all, and growled so natural that everybody said
it was really frightful. Then it was Tom's turn to be an animal, and he
was to be the raging rhinoceros of Central Africa. I helped dress him in
the barn, and when he was dressed he looked beautiful.
The rhinoceros's skin went all over him, and was tied together so that
he couldn't get out of it without help. His horn was made of wood
painted white, and his eyes were two agates. Of course he couldn't see
through them, but they looked natural, and as I was to lead him, he
didn't need to see.
[Illustration: THEN HE FELL INTO THE HOT-BED, AND BROKE ALL THE GLASS.]
I had just got him outside the barn, and had begun to say, "Ladies and
gentlemen, this is the raging rhinoceros," when he gave the most awful
yell you ever heard, and got up on his hind-legs, and began to rush
around as if he was crazy. He rushed against Aunt Eliza, and upset her
all over the McGinnis girls, and then he banged up against the
water-barrel, and upset that, and then he fell into the hot-bed, and
broke all the glass. You never saw such an awful sight. The rhinoceros
kept yelling all the time, only nobody could understand what he said,
and pulling at his head with his fore-paws, and jumping up and down, and
smashing everything in his way, and I went after him just as if I was a
Central African hunting a rhinoceros.
I was almost frightened, and as for the folks, they ran into the house,
all except Aunt Eliza, who had to be carried in. I kept as close behind
the rhinoceros as I could, begging him to be quiet, and tell me what was
the matter. After a while he lay down on the ground, and I cut the
strings of his skin, so that he could get his head out and talk.
He said he was 'most dead. The wasps had built a nest in one of his
hind-legs as it was hanging in the barn, and they had stung him until
they got tired. He said he'd never have anything more to do with the
menagerie, and went home with his mother, and my mother said I must
give him all the money, because he had suffered so much.
But, as I said, I won't be discouraged, and will try to do good, and be
useful to others the next time I see a fair chance.