The Bad Boy Feeds the Menagerie Scotch Snuff--Pa Gets Mauled by the
Sneezing Animals--Pa Takes a Midnight Ride on a Mule to Escape
Punishment.
Well, I s'pose I have done it now and it would not surprise me to be
killed and fed to wild animals,' The manager of the show was talking to
pa and me, before we left New York, about the condition of the show. Its
finances were all balled up on account of settling with people who
pretended to be injured when the tent blew down at Poughkeepsie, and the
hands and performers are kicking because we are a month behind on
salaries, and they get drunk whenever any jay will buy for them.
Everybody gives passes to everybody that wants to get in the show, so
the box office man has a sinecure, and people chase us from town to town
for money for board, and hay and everything.
All through New Jersey we showed to claim agents and creditors, and
didn't take in money enough to buy meat for the animals. He said the
animals had all taken cold, and lay around dormant, and didn't take any
interest in the business, and the manager told pa he must think of
something to wake the animals up. Pa said he would leave it to me to
wake 'em up, and get some ginger into them. I told pa if I had five
dollars to spend I could make every animal jump like a box car. Pa gave
me the money, and I went and bought five pounds of Scotchsnuff, and
divided it up into ounce packages, and started during the afternoon
performance at Wilmington, Del., to wake up the animals.
There is something peculiar about animals, if you try to give them
anything that they think you want them to take, you can't drive it down
them with a pile driver, but if you try to hide something where they can
reach it, they watch you out of one eye, and when you go away they look
at you as much as to say: "O, you think you are smart, don't you?" Then
they will go and dig it up, and play with it, and eat it if they want
to.
I took my first package of snuff to the lion's cage, and he was the
sickest and most disgusted looking lion you ever saw, acting like a man
who has taken a severe cold, and wants to kill anybody that looks at
him. The lion lay on the straw, stretched out full length, paying no
attention to the crowd that passed his cage, and acting as though he
wanted a hot whisky and his feet soaked in mustard water. When he was
not looking I hid the package of snuff under the straw, and rattled the
straw a little, and he opened his eyes and looked at me as much as to
say: "You can't fool old Shadrack, for I am onto you." I walked away
behind the hyena cage, and Mr. Lion got up and stretched himself, and
walked to the place where I put the paper of snuff, put his foot on it
and broke the paper, and then he put his nose down and sniffed a sniff
that drew the whole of the snuff up into his nose and lungs, and insides
generally.
Gee, but you never saw such a change in a lion. The crowd of visitors
were right near his cage, when he sniffed, and when he got the snuff
into him, he began to heave his sides like a man who is preparing to
sneeze, caught his breath a few times, and let out a sneeze that sounded
like the explosion of an automobile tire. It threw cut feed all over the
audience, and everybody ran away yelling that the lion busted.
He kept on sneezing, and looking so astounded, as though he couldn't
make out what had got into him. Pa heard the commotion and came running
up to the cage to find out what ailed the lion. After I had gone around
to the other cages and put snuff in all of them, I came up to the lion's
cage. The lion had stopped sneezing and was roaring and jumping up and
down, with his mouth open, trying to catch his breath, like a man who
has taken too big a dose of fresh horse-radish.
Pa said: "What have you been doing to Shadrack?"
I told pa I had woke Shadrack up, and that in about a minute he would
find that the whole animal kingdom had got a bellyful, and would join in
the chorus.
Pa tried to soothe the lion by going up to the cage and stroking his
mane, but the lion looked cross-eyed and stopped prancing and gave a
sneeze right at pa, which blew pa clear across the tent to where the
sacred cow had just got hers. When the stuff began to work on that cow
it was simply scandalous, 'cause she bellowed and cried and sneezed all
at once, and pawed pa. He got up and told me I was overdoing this waking
up act on the animals.
By that time the cage of hyenas began to sneeze a quartette, and fight
each other, and the atmosphere about their cage was full of hair and
language that would be much like cussing if it could be translated into
English. Pa tried to quiet the crowd and silence the hyenas by taking an
iron bar and mauling them, but the hyenas just backed up against the
rear of the cage and howled and sneezed at pa, and dared him to come on.
[Illustration: The Lion Sneezed and Blew Pa Clear Across the Tent.]
One of them caught him by the shirt sleeve and tore pa's shirt off and
eat it. Pa was a sight, with no shirt on, and he ought to have gone to
the dressing room and slicked, but just then the camels and the
giraffes, who had inhaled their snuff, began to sneeze and beg to be
killed, and pa had to go over there and quiet them. A camel is the
solemnist looking beast on earth when he tries to be good natured, but
when he is sick and mad, and full of snuff, he is a fiend. One such
camel is enough for a man to handle, but when 14 camels are all sneezing
at once, and trying to locate the person that is responsible for their
trouble, it is the safest to keep away, and when pa went in amongst
them, with no shirt on, and the Arab keepers had run away in fright, it
was a dangerous thing to do.
But pa is brave even to rashness. He went up to Mahomet, the
double-humped leader of the herd, who was the leader of the sneezers,
and kicked him in the slats and told him to hush up his noise. He
clubbed him on the humps with a tent stake. Then there was a rebellion
in Egypt, and Mahomet bit pa, and wouldn't let go, and the other camels
sneezed all over pa, and had him down, walking on him with their padded
feet. The circus hands had to pull pa out, and it wasn't so bad, because
the crowd remained and they thought it was a part of the show, and that
the animals were trained to sneeze that way.
The worst case was the hippopotamus. He was so big, and had such big
nostrils, that I laid about half a pound of snuff on the side of his
tank, and when he snuffed it up his nose he got it all. I heard a howl
from the tank and the herd, who was the leader of the sneezers, and I
told pa to come on, 'cause Vessuvious was going to erupt.
Pa came on the run, just as he was, and then the worst happened. I think
the hippo went under water when he found the sneeze was coming, for just
as pa got to the tank the water flew into the air like a torpedo had
exploded under a battle-ship, and the hippo had sneezed all right and pa
and the audience which had followed him were drenched and deafened by
the explosion. The hippo had blown the water all out of his tank, and he
lay at the bottom, on his side, sneezing little sneezes not louder than
the report of a six-pound cannon, and panting for breath. Then he raised
his head, got up on his feet, and opened his mouth like a gash cut in a
steer by a cow catcher of an engine, and he yawned, and I guess he got
the lockjaw, 'cause he kept his mouth open all the afternoon to get the
air, like a soprano singer in a choir, who has been fed a cayenne pepper
lozenger by the tenor, just before she gets up to sing: "A Charge to
Keep, I Have."
We went around and inspected the sneezing animals with the manager, and
he complimented me by saying I had saved the show from becoming an
aggregation of stuffed animals, only fit for a taxidermist studio, and
made every animal show that he had ginger in him. He wanted me to try my
snuff cure on the performers and freaks, 'cause they were getting to be
dead ones.
Well, before the day was over at Wilmington, Del., pa was scared worse
than he ever was in all his life before. The state of Delaware is the
only state that punishes criminals by tying them up and whipping them on
the bare back with a cat-o'-nine-tails, and all our men had been warned
to be good while they were in Delaware, 'cause if they committed any
crime there was no power on earth that could save them from being
publicly horsewhipped. Pa himself impressed it on the men to look out
that they didn't get into any trouble. Gee, but the fear of a public
whipping makes men good.
Twenty years ago some hold-up men from New York robbed a bank in
Delaware, and were caught, and given 50 lashes apiece on the bare back,
by a big negro, and there has never been a burglary in Delaware since.
We thought we would play a joke on pa, so the manager told pa that
constables were looking for him to arrest him for cruelty to animals,
for kicking a camel in the stomach, and hitting the camel with an iron
bar, and that if pa didn't want to be publicly horsewhipped on the bare
back he better skip out for Washington, D.C., where we would show in a
couple of days, and wait for us.
Pa was so frightened he couldn't get supper, and everybody talked about
cats of nine tails, and how prisoners were cut to pieces, and every time
pa saw a jay with a slouch hat he thought it was a constable after him.
After dark he put on an old suit of clothes and said he was going to
Washington. They told him if he went to take a train he would surely be
arrested at the depot, so pa put a saddle on one of the mules, and rode
out of town and rode all night, and all the next day he bought oats of
farmers to be delivered at Wilmington for the circus. Finally he got out
of Delaware, and the next day the farmers came in with the oats, but the
show was gone, and they won't do a thing to pa if he ever shows up in
Delaware again.
[Illustration: Pa Rode Out of Town and Rode All Night.]
Pa met us at the depot in Washington, but he was ever so changed from
his long ride and anxiety over the possibility of being arrested and
pilloried, and lambasted by a negro in Delaware. He said to me, with a
trembling voice: "Hennery, this 'ere show business is too much for your
pa. I would rather be a Mormon, in Utah, with 40 wives, and several
hundred children, and long whiskers. I am a changed man, Hennery, and
afraid of my shadow."