One boy at Richmond, Va., got it on me
by getting a section of fire hose and hitching it to a hydrant, and
letting the water run into a trough at the camel stand in the menagerie,
and before I knew it the camels had filled up until they were swelled
four times as big as they ought to be. Then they laid down, and couldn't
march in the grand entree, and pa sent for a plumber to have the camels
fixed with faucets. That boy was a genius, and we kept him and put him
into the lemonade privilege. You can fill a camel with a hydrant all
right, but if you bring the water in pails he will beat the game.
I remember one boy at Wilmington, Del., who insisted on going along with
the show, 'cause his mother made him work after school, and my heart was
touched, 'cause I know how a boy hates to work after school, so I gave
him a job sprinkling insect powder on the buffaloes, that were
scratching themselves against the tent poles so much that I felt they
had something alive concealed about their persons. That boy started in
with his can of insect powder on a buffalo calf, and then he filled the
cow's hair full of the powder, and when he started on the bull, the bull
took a sniff of the powder on the cow, and got it up his nose, and he
held his head up kind of scared like, and turned his upper lip
wrong-side out, and began to paw the ground.
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