" Then they turn their backs and act so much like
shoddy aristocracy that you would swear they were human.
I remember when pa was first in the elephant corral, the keeper forgot
to tell the big elephant who pa was, and when the keeper raised up one
foot of the elephant and examined a corn, pa went up and pinched a bunch
on the elephant's leg and said to the keeper: "That looks to me like a
spavin," and he nebbed it hard. Well, the elephant groaned like a boy
with a stone bruise on his heel, and before pa knew what was coming the
elephant wound his trunk under pa and raised pa upon his tusks and was
going to toss him in the air and catch him as he came down and walk on
him, when pa yelled murder and the keeper took an iron hook and hooked
it into the elephant's skin, and said: "Let that man down," and he let
pa down easy, and the keeper some way showed the elephant that pa was
one of the owners of the show, and that elephant acted just as human as
could be, for he fairly toadied to pa, like a society leader that has
given the cold shoulder to some one that is as good or better than they,
or like an impudent employee who has insulted his employer and is afraid
of losing his job. After that whenever pa and I go around the elephants
they bow down to us, and I think I could take an iron hook and drive an
elephant anywhere.
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