Pa Is Sent to a Hospital to Recuperate--The Bad Boy Discourages
Other Boys from Running Away with the Circus--He Makes Them Water
the Camels, Curry the Hyenas and Put Insect Powder on the Buffaloes.
This is the first time since we started out with the circus in the
spring that pa and I have not been two "Johnnies on the spot," ready for
anything that the managers told us to do. Oklahoma, though, and the
Indian Territory, have been too much for pa, and they sent him on to
Kansas City to recuperate in a hospital for a week, while the show does
Kansas to a finish, and makes a triumphal entry into Missouri.
I wonder how the show will get along without us for a week, 'cause they
sentenced me to go along with pa, so I could be handy to hold his hands
when the doctors are pulling cactus needles out of his hide. I guess pa
was willing enough to jump Kansas in the night from what he told us
once.
He said when he was a young man he and a railroad brakeman got busted at
Topeka, and they had an order book printed, and went all over Kansas
taking orders for Osier willows, which they warranted to grow so high in
two years they would make fences for the farms that no animals or
blizzards could get over or through, and make shade for the houses and
the whole farm. It was the year when the Osier willow craze was on and
every farmer on the plains wanted to transform his prairie into a
forest. Pa says the farmers fought with each other to sign orders, and
some paid in advance, so as to get the willow cuttings in a hurry. Well,
pa and the railroad man canvassed Kansas, and sold more than forty
thousand millions of Osier willow cuttings, and put in the whole winter.
In the spring, when it was time to deliver the goods, they went into the
river bottoms and cut a whole lot of "pussy willow" cuttings, delivered
them to the farmers and got their money, and went away. When the pussy
willow cuttings died in their tracks, or grew up just plain pussy
willows that never got high enough to hide a jack rabbit, the farmers of
Kansas loaded their guns and waited for pa and the brakeman to come back
to Kansas, but they never went back.
The brakeman became president of a great railroad, but when he has to go
across the continent in his special car, he dodges Kansas, and goes
across by the northern or southern route. Pa has so far dodged the
farmers, but money wouldn't have hired him to stay with the circus and
meet those farmers that they sold the willow gold bricks to. And yet,
when I bunco anybody around the show, pa takes me one side and tells me
that honesty is the best policy, and to never lie, 'cause my character
as a man will depend on the start I make as a boy. He don't want me to
go through life regretting the past, and being afraid of the cars for
fear some act of my younger days will become known and queer me. I guess
pa knows how it is hisself.
Well, if there is one thing I am proud of, it is that I have always been
good. When I grow up to be a man, prosperous in business, and belonging
to a church, and married, and have children growing up around me, I can
put on an innocent face and a bold front, and point to my past with
pride, if I should go to live among strangers, where nobody took the
papers, and the people were not on to me. Pa says as long as your
conscience is clear, and your pores open, life is one glad, sweet song.
Well, I don't know, but if pa's conscience is clear, he must have
strained it the way they do rain water, to get the wigglers out, or
else he has used an egg to settle his conscience, the way they settle
coffee. If his pores are open, he has opened them in the old way, with
a corkscrew. But, with all I have had to contend with in the way of a
frightful example from pa, I am not so worse.
How many boys of my age, do you suppose, could put in a season with a
circus and have all the facilities I have had to go wrong, and come out
as well as I have? The way the freaks just doted on me would have turned
the heads of most boys, but when I found out that all of them, from the
fat woman and the bearded woman, to the trapeze performers, ate onions
three times a day, I said: "Nay, nay, Hennery will camp with the
animals, whose smell is natural, and not acquired."
Say, do you know I have saved hundred of boys this summer from ruin,
'cause in every town there are lots of boys who want to run away from
home and go off with a circus, and 'cause I belonged to the show they
all came to me, and pa appointed me to discourage the boys, and drive
them away from the show. I know in Virginia all the boys wanted to run
away, and but for me the state wouldn't have boys enough to grow up and
shoot the negroes. But when I found boys who wanted to skip away from
home, I would give them a job, and they would have slept in the straw
with the horses, and eaten at the second table after the negroes had
been fed, if they could only shake their comfortable homes and loving
friends and join a traveling circus.
Well, I always gave such boys a job watering the camels, and after they
had carried water from daylight till dark, and had seen it disappear
down a camel, and the camels grumbling because they didn't bring water
faster, the boys would ask me how long it look to fill up a camel,
anyway. I would tell them that if they kept right at work, the camels
ought to be filled up full along in the fall. The boys would reluctantly
resign. Our camels have been the making of hundreds of boys by their
tank-like capacity to hold water. One boy at Richmond, Va., got it on me
by getting a section of fire hose and hitching it to a hydrant, and
letting the water run into a trough at the camel stand in the menagerie,
and before I knew it the camels had filled up until they were swelled
four times as big as they ought to be. Then they laid down, and couldn't
march in the grand entree, and pa sent for a plumber to have the camels
fixed with faucets. That boy was a genius, and we kept him and put him
into the lemonade privilege. You can fill a camel with a hydrant all
right, but if you bring the water in pails he will beat the game.
I remember one boy at Wilmington, Del., who insisted on going along with
the show, 'cause his mother made him work after school, and my heart was
touched, 'cause I know how a boy hates to work after school, so I gave
him a job sprinkling insect powder on the buffaloes, that were
scratching themselves against the tent poles so much that I felt they
had something alive concealed about their persons. That boy started in
with his can of insect powder on a buffalo calf, and then he filled the
cow's hair full of the powder, and when he started on the bull, the bull
took a sniff of the powder on the cow, and got it up his nose, and he
held his head up kind of scared like, and turned his upper lip
wrong-side out, and began to paw the ground. Then he made a charge on
that boy, and tossed him through the tent, and I looked through the
hole, and saw the boy scratching gravel towards town. If he is not
running yet, he is probably doing chores for his mother both before and
after school.
[Illustration: The Bull Tossed the Boy Through the Tent.]
I have discouraged most of the boys who wanted to run away and go with
the show, by giving them a curry comb and brush and telling them they
could have a permanent job currying off the hyenas. Most boys would look
sort of dubious about it, but would think it was up to them to be game,
and they would take the curry comb and brush all right. I would take
them to the cage, and tell them to just talk soothing to the hyenas
through the bars, and when the hyenas began to get tame and act as
though it would give them pleasure to be curried off, and laid down and
rolled over, and purred like a cat that wanted to be scratched, and
acted as though they would eat out of one's hand, the boys might call
me, and I would have the cage opened and they could go in and curry them
off.
Well, it would kill you dead to see a fool boy side up to a hyena cage
and try to hypnotize a hyena by kind words and a pious example, saying
soothing words like: "Soo, boss," or "O, come off now, and be a good
fellow," and see the hyena snarl and show his teeth like an anarchist
that a multi-millionaire might try to tame so he would take a roll of
money out of his hand without biting the hand. I have had boys stand in
front of a hyena cage with a curry-comb and brush all day, trying to get
on good terms with the hyenas, and occasionally the hyenas would forget
to snarl and the boy would think the animals were beginning to weaken,
and the boy would work up closer to the cage, and say: "Pretty pussy,"
and hold out his hand and say: "Good fellow." Then the whole cageful of
hyenas would make a rush for him, howling, snapping and scratching, with
their bristles up, and the boy would fall backwards over a sacred cow.
About this time I would come along and ask the boy if he had got the
hyenas curried, 'cause if he had, I wanted him to curry the grave
robbers--the jackals. Then the boy would reluctantly give up his tools,
and say if I wanted the hyenas and jackals curried off I could do it
myself. I would tell them they would never do for the circus business,
'cause faint heart never won fair hyena. Then they would go home and
sell their mother's copper boiler to get money to pay their way in the
show. Gee, but I have saved lots of boys from a circus fate.
Pa has an awful time in the hospital, 'cause twice a day the doctors
strip him and pull a mess of cactus thorns out of him, and he yells and
don't talk very pious. The doctor told me I must try and think of
something to divert pa's mind from his suffering.
So I got some telegraph blanks and envelopes, and I have written
messages from the show managers, twice a day. The morning message would
tell about the business of the day before, and how they missed pa. Then
I would add something like this: "The farmers around Olathe are all
inquiring for you," or "The farmers around Topeka wish you were here,
'cause they want to give you a reception," or "About 200 farmers at
Parsons think we ought to let them in free, on account of being old
friends of yours." The last one broke pa all up. The message said: "Many
farmers from Atchison are going to come with us to Kansas City to confer
with you on an old matter of business." Pa jumped like a box car off the
track, and wanted the doctors to send him to a hospital at St. Louis,
and he told the doctors the reason, but they cheered him up by saying
that if any mob came to the hospital after him, they would hide him in
the pickling vat, and make the mob believe he was dead. That is the way
it stands now. But pa is not so darn happy as I have seen him, though I
try to do all I can to keep his mind off his trouble. I tell him as long
as his conscience is clear, he is all right, but he says: "But, Hennery,
that's the trouble; it ain't clear. Well, let us have peace, at any
price."
[Illustration: Pa Jumped Like a Box Car.]