The
first animal to open up the chorus was the hippopotamus, 'cause we gave
him about four quarts of horseradish on account of his mouth, and he
swallowed it at one mouthful. First he looked as though he felt hurt,
and stopped chewing, and seemed to be thinking, like a horse that wakes
up in the night with colic, and raises the whole family to sit up with
him all night and pour things down his neck out of a long-neck bottle.
The hippo held his breath for about a minute, and then he opened his
mouth so you could drive a wagon in, and gave the grand hailing sign of
distress, and said: "Wow, wow, wow," as plain as a man could. Then he
rolled over into his tank and yelled "murder," and wallowed around, and
stood on his head, till one of the keepers went in the cage to try to
soothe him. He chased the keeper out, and the crowd that had just begun
to come in fell back in terror.
There was quite a crowd around the camels watching them peacefully chew
their cuds, as they do at evening on the dessert, and the Arabs who had
charge of the camels were standing around, posing as though they were
the whole thing, when the old black, double-hump camel got his quart of
horseradish down into one of his stomachs, as he was kneeling down on
all fours. He yelled: "O, mamma," and got up on all his feet, and
kicked an Arab off a prayer rug, and bellowed and groaned.
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