The Bad Boy Puts Fly-Paper in the Bob Cat's Cage--The Bob Cat Causes
a Panic in the Main Tent--The Midget Quarrels with the Giant--Pa is
Almost Arrested for Kidnaping and the Ostrich Swallows His Diamond
Stud.
May 14.--This has been a week that would kill anybody, and pa and I talk
of resigning, though pa feels as though he didn't want to break up the
show by going away right in the middle of the harvesting of shekels from
the country men, and I don't know what would happen if pa and I should
both be taken sick at the same time.
The boss of the menagerie got a new animal by express from Colorado when
we were leaving Akron, O., and we got it in one end of a cage occupied
by a happy family of rabbits, coons, a spotted leopard and a hound dog
and a house cat. The new animal was a bob cat, such as Roosevelt shoots
when the man has the camera ready to catch him in the act. Say, but that
bob cat is a terror, and crosser than any animal we got, except the
hyenas. The bob cat just walked around and snarled and spit at the happy
family through the bars, and kept them awake all night on the road, and
the happy family held a sort of convention and I could see by the way
they all looked at me that they were passing resolutions inviting me to
break up the bob cat business. The manager of the menagerie told pa he
wished the confounded bob cat would escape, 'cause he was a blooming
nuisance, so I thought I would help get rid of the beast, and save the
show from disgrace. So when we got to Oberlin I thought that was a pious
community that could stand a wild bob cat, so I put several sheets of
sticky tanglefoot fly paper in the bob cat's cage and opened the door of
the cage, after the crowd had gone into the main tent to the big show,
and the menagerie tent was empty except the keepers. They were all
asleep under the wagons, and the animals had all curled down for a nap,
and the freaks were on their platform lolling around, waiting for the
main show to be out so they could do their stunts over again.
The bob cat got all his four feet in the tanglefoot fly paper, then he
grabbed a sheet in his mouth and rolled over in a few more sheets, and
when he was entirely harmless and you couldn't tell what he was, I
opened the door of the cage and he went out like a rocket, and rolled
over a few times in the sawdust, and then jumped on the platform with
the freaks, run over the fat woman, who was laying back in a Morris
chair, and left one of the sheets of fly paper on her low neck, and it
stuck like a porous plaster. She yelled that she had been stabbed, and
pa came along just as the bob cat jumped off the platform, and struck pa
on the back, and the cat spit at pa, and pa fell over among the sacred
cattle and rolled under a cow and got on his knees, when the animals all
began to roar, and pa crawled behind a bale of hay, and a zebra stepped
on pa's face, and pa yelled "Hey, Rube," which is a grand hailing sign
of distress when circus men want to fight, and about a hundred of the
canvasmen came running with tent stakes to hit people with.
[Illustration: The Bob Cat Struck Pa on the Back.]
Pa crawled out from the bale of hay, which he had pulled over him, and
the hay stuck to the fly paper on pa, and a camel began to eat the hay,
and he chewed pa's shirt until the hands pulled pa away.
The bob cat escaped into the main tent, just as the Japanese jugglers
were juggling in No. 1 ring, and the elephants were standing on their
heads in No. 2 ring, and the flying trapeze artists were jumping from
one trapeze to another, and the bob cat rushed through the Japanese, and
amongst the elephants, with the fly paper all over him, and the audience
fairly yelled, 'cause they thought it was a clown dressed up to do some
stunt, but the Japanese left the ring in a panic, while the elephants
got down off their heads and stood on their hind feet and cried like
children.
The audience saw that something had happened that was serious and they
all rose to their feet and were going off into a panic when pa and a few
brave men came and drove the bob cat up a centerpole, away up above the
torches, and made speeches to the audience, and quieted them down, and
the performance went on. But pa was a sight, and the head circus man
told pa he would have to dress better, or forever after hold his peace,
and pa said if any man could be more patient than he was, with a bob cat
on his neck, a sacred cow walking on him, and a camel trying to eat his
whiskers and shirt, they better hire that man.
But it was all fixed up and everybody apologized to everybody, and the
bob cat went on up the center pole and out on top of the canvas and
escaped into Ohio, where it will probably be holding office before next
fall.
Gee, but the giant is a coward. When the bob cat began to run up the
giant's leg, and then up his back, and then jumped from his shoulder
onto the fat lady, the giant turned pale and cried, and the midget said
to him: "O, you big stiff, why didn't you have sand enough to hold the
kitty till the keeper came? I've a good mind to get on a stepladder and
kick you," and the cowardly giant cried again, and said if the midget
ever struck him he would report him to the management. Just then pa came
along and asked what the row was about, and when pa found that the
midget was trying to pick a quarrel with the giant, he took the midget
across his knee and gave him a few spanks, and told him to quit bullying
the freaks. The midget got up on a barrel and called his son, who is
bigger than pa, when I stepped in between them and told the midget's son
if he struck my father I would have his heart's blood, and he quailed,
and then I bullied the giant, who is a coward, and now they are all
afraid of me.
I don't see how a big fellow like a giant can be afraid of things
smaller than he is, and shy when a dog barks, and be afraid some one is
going to smash him in the jaw, but pa says the size of a man don't make
any difference, 'cause it is the heart that does the business. A man may
be big enough and strong enough to tip over a box car, loaded with pig
iron, but if his heart is one of these little ones intended for a miser,
with no pepper sauce running from the heart to the arteries and things,
and a liver that is white, and nerves that are trembly, and no gall to
speak of, why a big man is liable to be walked all over by a nervy
little man who is spunky, and gets mad and froths at the mouth.
I have been having great times with the monkeys, and I guess the manager
will make me superintendent of monkeys, 'cause they all seem to be stuck
on me, and will do anything I tell them to. Pa says they think I am some
new kind of a monkey, and they look up to me. I lead out the big monkeys
that ride the goats and dogs, and have a horse race in the ring, and
fasten them on the little animals, and when they ride around the ring on
the dogs and goats and ponies, they keep looking at me as though they
wanted my approval.
There is one little monkey that sleeps nearly all the time, and I played
a trick on pa with it that like to got me arrested and licked by a man
who was mad. A man and woman with a baby in a little wagon were going
through the menagerie, and it was crowded, and they left the baby and
wagon in pa's charge, near the monkey cage, while they went to see the
hippopotamus. Pa is the most accommodating man about holding babies that
ever was. The baby was asleep when its folks left it in the wagon with
pa, but it woke up while they were gone, and pa took it out of the baby
wagon and carried it around just as he would at home, and showed it the
animals, and held it up on his shoulder, and I took the little monkey
and put it in the baby wagon, and it went to sleep, and I put a veil
over it, and was standing by the wagon talking with a peanut butcher,
when the parents of the baby came back, and the woman raised up the veil
to see if the child was asleep, when the monkey woke up and put its
hairy hands up to rub it eyes. The monkey looked up at the woman with
beady eyes and began to chatter, and she yelled and her husband took a
look at the monk, and he was mad. They could both see it was a monkey
instead of a baby, and they asked where the old man with the chin
whiskers was that they left the baby with, and the peanut butcher said:
"What, that old guy with the checkered vest? Why, he has gone with the
baby over to the lion cage, where they are feeding the lions. Don't you
see him holding the baby upon his shoulder?" By ginger, I never saw two
people sprint the way they did, 'cause I guess they thought pa was sure
crazy, and would give the baby to the lions. But I told them the old man
was all right, and would bring the baby back, and if he didn't they
could have the monkey, 'cause I didn't want them to think they were
going to be losers while attending our show. Then I chucked the monkey
under the chin and said: "Maybe this is your baby, 'cause they change
wonderfully when they get into a show."
Well, I just had time to put the monkey back in the cage when I saw that
couple surround pa, and the woman grabbed the baby out of his arms, and
the man tackled pa around the legs below the knee, and threw pa down
under the ostrich cage, and said: "You kidnaper! I am a good mind to
choke the life out of you," and he squeezed pa's windpipe until pa's
tongue run out, when a canvasman came along and hit the man in the ear,
and he laid down near a zebra, and the zebra kicked at the man and hit
pa, 'cause a zebra is crosseyed and kicks like a woman throws a stone,
and no man knows where it listeth.
[Illustration: The Man Tackled Pa.]
Pa got up to murder the man that choked him, when the ostrich reached
its head out between the bars of the cage and picked pa's big diamond
stud off his shirt, big as a piece of rock candy, and swallowed it, and
pa said that's the limit, and he called the manager and asked him how he
was going to get his diamond stud out of the ostrich. The manager told
pa to go to the dressing-room and ask the woman who has charge of the
wardrobe for the ostrich stomach pump, and when he got the stomach pump
the manager said the ostrich would cough up the diamond stud. Pa went
off to the dressing-room to get the ostrich stomach pump, and I knew
there was going to be trouble, 'cause I thought the manager was just
stringing pa.
Well, he went up to the woman in the dressing-room, and said he came
after her stomach pump, ostrich size, and you'd a died to see the
ruction. The woman looked at pa as though he had escaped from a
sanitarium, and then she seemed to think he was trying to make game of
her, and she said: "You old skate, do you know who you have the honor of
addressing? I am the queen of this realm, and they all kow-tow to me;
now you come and take your medicine," and before pa could say boo she
had pulled a big clothes bag over his head and tied it around his feet,
and said: "Come on, girls, we are going to have roasted missionary," and
they were lighting a gasoline torch to roast pa, when the owner of the
show came along and asked what was up. When the wardrobe woman told him
pa had insulted her, the owner gave her $10 to buy champagne for the
performers, and she released pa, and he went back to choke his diamond
out of the ostrich.
Pa says this life is more exciting, if anything, than staying at home,
and it will either kill him or cure him of a desire to be a Barnum in
about a month more.