Pa yelled to the people on horseback to kill the elephant, and the crowd
cheered, thinking it was the best performance they ever saw in a free
street parade, and the animals in the cages behind were yapping as
though they knew what was going on. The elephant got down on all fours,
and we straightened up in the pagoda, and for a block or so the beast
only waltzed around. As we got to some sort of a public square, where
there were thousands of people, the stale beer seemed to be getting in
its work, for the elephant looked at the people, as much as to say: "Now
I will show you something not down on the bills," and, by ginger, if he
didn't raise up his hind quarters and stand on his front feet, right by
the side of a big fountain, and he reached in his trunk for a drink,
when all of us on the pagoda clung to pa, and we all slid right off into
the big basin of water. The fountain played on us, and pa was under
water, with the four Circassian beauties, and when we rolled or slid
down over the elephant's head, he looked at us and seemed to chuckle:
"What you getting off here for, the show ain't half out."
Well, the parade went on and left the elephant and the rest of us at the
fountain, and to show that animals understand each other, and can
appreciate a joke, every animal that passed us gave us the laugh, even
the hippopotamus, which opened his mouth as big as a tunnel, and showed
his teeth and acted as though he would like to exchange tanks with us.
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