"
Say, do you know I have saved hundred of boys this summer from ruin,
'cause in every town there are lots of boys who want to run away from
home and go off with a circus, and 'cause I belonged to the show they
all came to me, and pa appointed me to discourage the boys, and drive
them away from the show. I know in Virginia all the boys wanted to run
away, and but for me the state wouldn't have boys enough to grow up and
shoot the negroes. But when I found boys who wanted to skip away from
home, I would give them a job, and they would have slept in the straw
with the horses, and eaten at the second table after the negroes had
been fed, if they could only shake their comfortable homes and loving
friends and join a traveling circus.
Well, I always gave such boys a job watering the camels, and after they
had carried water from daylight till dark, and had seen it disappear
down a camel, and the camels grumbling because they didn't bring water
faster, the boys would ask me how long it look to fill up a camel,
anyway. I would tell them that if they kept right at work, the camels
ought to be filled up full along in the fall. The boys would reluctantly
resign. Our camels have been the making of hundreds of boys by their
tank-like capacity to hold water.
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