"
I went back to young Mr. Senator and took his bet, and told him I had
plenty more money to bet the same way, and he said the next afternoon he
would come with his mice and rats, and a lot of money to bet that you
couldn't hold that flock of elephants with log chains when he opened his
bag of rats and mice.
Well, how it got into the papers I do not know, but the next morning
they all said an interesting experiment would be made the next afternoon
at the great and only circus, to determine once and for all whether
elephants were afraid of mice, and that a senator's son and a son of one
of the proprietors of the show would conduct the experiment by turning
loose a lot of mice and rats in the rings at precisely 3:30 p.m.
Well, you never saw such a crowd in a circus as we had that afternoon.
It seemed as though the whole population turned out, foreign ministers,
negroes, society people and clerks. That senator's son and the whole
family, and the neighbors, must have been up all night catching mice and
rats, and it took nine boys and three servants to carry the baskets and
traps and bags of mice and rats. I passed them all in and we lined up on
a front seat to wait for the elephant stunt, and when the thing was ripe
we were to empty the whole mess of vermin into the ring.
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