So pa took a pole with a
hook in it and sat down on a bale of hay to watch Bolivar. It was one of
those hot days, and Bolivar stood drooping and perspiring, and wishing
the show was in Alaska, and pa was kind of sleepy, like everybody in the
show, when suddenly that elephant whooped, and swatted Jeanette, his
wife, a couple of times, and she cried pitiful, and pa put the hook in
Bolivar's hide and gave a jerk, and told him to hush up that noise, but
Bolivar just reared and pitched and walked right through the side of the
menagerie tent, and seemed to say to the other animals: "Come on, boys;
there is going to be something doing," and the animals all set up a howl
in their own language, as though they were saying: "Whooper up, old man,
and don't let them monkey with you."
Bolivar went out in the street and mowed a wide swath, with pa after
him, hooking him all the time, but he paid no attention to pa. He put
his head under the side of a street ear loaded with negroes that had
come to see the show, dressed in their Sunday clothes, and tipped the
car over on the side, and the negroes crawled through the windows and
went uptown yelling murder, while Bolivar went in front of a grocery
store where there was a pile of watermelons, and began to throw them at
the people in the street, and the negroes thought an elephant was not so
bad, so they came back and had a feast.
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