CHAPTER XIV.

    A Newport Monk Is Added to the Show—­The Boy Teaches Him Some “Manly
    Tricks”—­The Tent Blows Down and a Panic Follows—­Pa Manages the
    Animal Act Which Ends in a Novel Manner.

We have added to the show the most remarkable animal that ever was—­a baboon that dresses like a man, and eats at a table, using a knife and fork, and a napkin.  This baboon has been playing an engagement with the Four Hundred at Newport, dining with the crowned heads at that resort, but the confounded baboon got to be too human, and he fell in love with an heiress, and scared one of the Willie boys that was also in love with her.  His friends were afraid that the baboon would cut Willie out entirely, or get jealous and injure Willie, so the manager of the Four Hundred show decided to banish the baboon, and our show sent pa to Newport to buy the baboon and bring him to our show at New York.

We had the darndest time getting him away from Newport.  Pa couldn’t do any with him, but he took to me, ’cause he thought I was his long-lost brother, and I could do anything with him.  We got him in our stateroom on the boat, and took his clothes away from him, ’cause he only wears his clothes when he is being dined and wined, and we chained him in the upper berth.  He just raised the very deuce on the way down to New York.  After pa and I got to sleep that baboon got my clothes, and put them on, slipped the chain over his head, jumped through the transom, and went into every berth where the transom was open, and chatted with the people who occupied the berths.  There was an old man and woman from New Hampshire in one berth, and when the monk got in their berth and began to talk the Newport language, the old man thought it was me, and he said:  “Now, bub, you go away to your pa.”

The monk went out, and got into another berth, and crawled under the bunk, and when the woman came in to go to bed, she looked under it to see if any man was there.  When she saw our baboon she yelled “fire,” and the officers of the boat pulled him out by the hind leg, and tore my pant leg off.  Pa and I had to sit up the rest of the night with him, and when we landed him with the show at Madison Square Garden we felt relieved.

[Illustration:  When She Saw the Baboon She Yelled Fire.]

One woman on the boat has followed us ever since to collect damages from pa, ’cause his oldest son, the monk, proposed to her.  Gee, it seems to me a woman ought to know the difference between a baboon and a man, but some women will marry anything that wears clothes.