The senator's son saw pa up a tree, and he
said: "Old gentleman, if these are your animals, or insects, or whatever
they are, you ought to come down off your perch and take them to a
Keeley cure, because they are intoxicated."
[Illustration: Old Gentleman, You Ought to Come Down Off Your Perch.]
And pa came down and took a fence rail and sharpened it with an ax, and
he run it into Bolivar about a foot, and Bolivar trumpeted for
surrender, and that settled the elephant strike, for pa ordered Bolivar
into the road, and in five minutes the whole herd of elephants was
following Bolivar back to Washington, as meek as a drunken husband being
led home by his wife.
Gee, what do you think? The president heard how the senator's boy and I
stampeded the elephants and invited the senator's boy to bring his young
friend around to the white house to supper. Well, we went.
I forgot what we had to eat, I was so interested in the president's
conversation. He talked about the show business as though he had been a
ringmaster in a circus. He said he was in the show the day before when
we stampeded the elephants, and he told us about his hunting trips in
the west, until I could smell bacon cooking at the camp fire, and I
could smell the balsam boughs they slept on, on the ground.
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