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 of hay to watch Bolivar. It was one of
those hot days, and Bolivar stood drooping and perspiring, and wishing
the show was in Alaska, and pa was kind of sleepy, like everybody in the
show, when suddenly that elephant whooped, and swatted Jeanette, his
wife, a couple of times, and she cried pitiful, and pa put the hook in
Bolivar's hide and gave a jerk, and told him to hush up that noise, but
Bolivar just reared and pitched and walked right through the side of the
menagerie tent, and seemed to say to the other animals: "Come on, boys;
there is going to be something doing," and the animals all set up a howl
in their own language, as though they were saying: "Whooper up, old man,
and don't let them monkey with you."
Bolivar went out in the street and mowed a wide swath, with pa after
him, hooking him all the time, but he paid no attention to pa. He put
his head under the side of a street ear loaded with negroes that had
come to see the show, dressed in their Sunday clothes, and tipped the
car over on the side, and the negroes crawled through the windows and
went uptown yelling murder, while Bolivar went in front of a grocery
store where there was a pile of watermelons, and began to throw them at
the people in the street, and the negroes thought an elephant was not so
bad, so they came back and had a feast.
Pa tried to head off Bolivar at the grocery, but Bolivar took half a
watermelon and put the red side on top of pa's head, and squashed it
down so the seeds and juice and pulp ran down pa's shirt and neck, and
he looked as though murder had been committed, but pa wiped his face on
his shirt sleeve and showed game, because he kept mauling Bolivar with
the hook. Bolivar broke up a millinery store by throwing tomatoes at the
women in the windows, and he went into a yard where a woman was washing
and squirted the bluing water all over the woman, and all over pa, and
then he chewed the clothes on the line, and drove the family over the
fence.
[Illustration: Bolivar Took Half a Watermelon and Put the Red Side on
Top of Pa's Head.]
You'd a died to see those milliners climb over a high board fence head
first, and Bolivar actually seemed to laugh. Bolivar run one of his
tusks through a barrel of gasoline, and it run out on the street car
track, and an electric spark set it on fire, and the fire department
turned out, but the engines had to all go around Bolivar, 'cause he
wouldn't budge an inch, but seemed to say: "Let 'er rip, boys; this is
the Fourth of July."
The circus men began to come with ropes and clubs, to tie Bolivar and
throw him, but he escaped into a side street and watched the engines put
out the fire, and he swung around with his trunk and tusks and wouldn't
let anyone come near him but pa with the hook, and he seemed to enjoy
the prodding, but I guess that gave him courage to keep on doing things.
The principal proprietor of the show came along, and when he saw pa with
watermelon and bluing water all over him, and perspiration rolling down
his face, he said to pa: "Why don't you take your elephant back to the
lot, 'cause the afternoon performance is about to begin," and that made
pa mad, and he said: "You go on with your afternoon performance, and I
will have Bolivar there all right," and then everybody laughed, but pa
knew what he was about.
Pa dropped his hook and went to a hose cart and took a Babcock
extinguisher and strapped it on his back and went up to Bolivar, who was
tipping over some dummies in front of a clothing store, and pa said:
"Bolivar, you lay down," but Bolivar threw a seven-dollar suit of
clothes at pa, and bellowed, as much as to defy pa. Pa turned the cock
of the extinguisher, and pointed the nozzle at Bolivar's head, and began
to squirt the medicated water all over him. For a moment Bolivar acted
as though he couldn't take a joke, and was going to start off again, but
pa kept squirting, and when the chemical water began to eat into
Bolivar's hide, the big animal weakened, and trumpeted in token of
surrender, and kneeled down in front of pa, and finally got down so pa
could get on his back, and pa took the hook and hooked it in the flap of
Bolivar's ear, where is a tender spot, and he told Bolivar to get up and
go back to the tent, and Bolivar was as meek as a lamb, and he got up,
with pa on his back, and the fire extinguisher on pa's back, and marched
back to the tent, through the hole he had made coming out. Thousands of
people followed, and cheered pa, and when they got in the tent pa said
to the principal owner of the show, who had made fun of him: "Here's
your elephant, and whenever any of your old animals get on the warpath,
and you want 'em rounded up, don't forget my number, 'cause I can knock
the spots out of any animal except a giraffe." The crowd cheered pa
again and he got down off the elephant, took off his fire extinguisher,
and handed Bolivar a piece of rag carpet, and said: "Eat it, you old
catamaran, or I'll kill you," and Bolivar was so scared of pa he eat the
carpet, which shows the power of brain over avoirdupois, pa says.
[Illustration: Pa Turned the Cock of the Extinguisher and Pointed the
Nozzle at Bolivar's Head.]
The regular keeper of Bolivar heard he was on the rampage, and he came
back on the run to conquer him, after pa had got him back in the tent,
but Bolivar looked at him with a faraway look in his eyes, as much as to
say: "Seems to me I have met you somewhere before, but a new king has
been crowned," and he took his old keeper by the back of his coat and
threw him toward the monkey cage. The monkeys gave the keeper the laugh,
and Bolivar put his trunk lovingly on pa's shoulder, and seemed to say:
"Old man, you are it, from this time out." Pa looked proud, and the old
keeper looked sick. The people in the show are going to present pa with
a loving cup, and I guess he can run the menagerie part of the show.
When the freaks heard of pa's bravery, the fat woman and the bearded
lady wanted to hug pa, but pa waved them away, and said he liked the
elephant business best.
May 7.--I used to think that if I could belong to a circus, and go away
with it when it left the town I lived in, that it would be pretty near
going to heaven. I used to hope for the time when I would get nerve
enough to run away, and go with a circus, and wear a dirty shirt, and be
around a tent and wash off the legs of a spotted horse with castile
soap, and when people gathered about me to watch the proceedings, to
look tough and tell them in a hoarse voice way down my throat, sort of
husky from sleeping in the wet straw with the spotted horse, that they
must go on about their business, and not disturb the horse.
I had thought if I should run away and go with a circus, some day, when
I got far enough away from ma, that I would up and swear, and be tough,
and when I came home in the fall, and the neighbor boys would come
around me, I would chew tobacco and tell them of the joys of circus
life. Well, maybe I will some day, but at present I am sleepy all the
time.
We have showed six times the last week, and traveled a thousand miles,
and it seems as though there is nothing doing but putting up and taking
down tents, and going to and from the cars, and you can't be tough,
'cause there is always some boss around to tell you to look pleasant if
you are cross, and to tell you to change your shirt or get out of the
show, and if you swear at anything you are called down.
Pa and I put in a good deal of time during the afternoon and evening
performances in the dressing-room, near the door leading to the main
tent. That is the nearest to being in an insane asylum of any place I
was ever in. The performers get ready for their several acts in bunches
or families, all in one spot, and they act serious and jaw each other,
and each bunch acts as though their act was all there was to the show,
and if it was cut out for any reason, the show would have to lay up for
the season, when in fact each one is only a cog in the great wheel, and
if one cog should slip, the wheel would turn just the same. These people
never smile before they go in the ring, but just act as though too much
depended on them to crack a smile. When a bunch is called to go in the
ring, they all look at each other as though it was the parting of the
ways, and they clasp hands and go out of the dressing-room as though
walking on eggs. When they get in the ring they look around to see if
all eyes are upon them, and bow to people who are looking at something
going on in another ring, and who don't see them, and then they go
through their performance with everybody looking somewhere else.
When the act is over the audience seems glad, and clap their hands
because they are polite, and it don't cost anything to clap hands, and
the performers turn some more flip flaps, and go running out to the
dressing-room, and take a peek back into the big tent as though
expecting an encore, but the audience has forgotten them and is looking
for the next mess of performers, and the ones who have just been in go
and lie down on straw and wonder if they can hit the treasurer for an
advance on their salaries, so they can go to a beer garden and forget it
all.
An average audience never gets its money's worth unless some one is hurt
doing some daring act. Pa suggested that they have some one pretend to
be hurt in every act, and have them picked up and carried out on
stretchers with doctors wearing red crosses on their arms in attendance,
giving medicine and restoratives. The show tried it at Bucyrus, O., and
had seven men and two women injured so they had to be carried out, and
the audience went wild, and almost mobbed the dressing-room, to see the
doctor operate on the injured. It was such a great success that next
week we are going to put in an automobile ambulance and have an
operating table in the dressing-room with a gauze screen so the
audiences can see us cut off legs like they do in a hospital. Maybe we
shall put in a dissecting room if the people seem to demand it.