"
Ma looked at pa pretty savage, and said: "O, I see, you are going to be
ringmaster, but what is to become of Hennery and me while you are
cracking your whip around the hind legs of the fat woman, and ogling the
Circassian beauty?"
Pa put his hand on my head and said: "Mother, Hennery will go with me,
to see that I do not get into any trouble as a circus financier and
general manager of the menagerie and Wild West aggregation, and
hippodrome, in the great three-ring circus, and you can stay home and
give us absent treatment for what ails us, and pack the money I shall
send you in bales with a hay press, and put it in cold storage till we
come back in the fall. It is settled, we go to conquer, and the world
will lay at our feet before the middle of August, and you will be a
proud woman to own a husband who will be pointed at as the most
successful amusement purveyor the world has ever witnessed, and a son
who will start in at the bottom round of the circus ladder and rise,
step by step, until he will stand beside the great Barnum."
Ma thought seriously for a few minutes, and then she said: "O, pa, if it
was anything but the circus business you and Hennery went into, like
selling soap or being a bank defaulter, or something respectable, I
could look the neighbors in the face, but of course if there is money in
it, and you feel that the good Lord has called you to the circus field,
and you will see that Hennery does not stay out nights, and Hennery will
promise to see that you put on a clean collar occasionally, and you will
promise me that you will not let any of those circus women in spangles
make eyes at you, I will consent to your going with the circus, just
this once, as the doctor has advised that you lead an active life, and I
guess you will get it traveling with a circus, for it nearly killed me
that time I took Hennery to see the animals, and the tent blew down, and
we got separated and the sacred cow chased ma up the church steps, and
Hennery and a monkey were brought home by a policeman about daylight the
next morning, that time you were off fishing, and I never told you about
going to the circus when you were away.
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