Well, I s’pose I have done it now and it would not surprise me to be killed and fed to wild animals,’ The manager of the show was talking to pa and me, before we left New York, about the condition of the show.  Its finances were all balled up on account of settling with people who pretended to be injured when the tent blew down at Poughkeepsie, and the hands and performers are kicking because we are a month behind on salaries, and they get drunk whenever any jay will buy for them.  Everybody gives passes to everybody that wants to get in the show, so the box office man has a sinecure, and people chase us from town to town for money for board, and hay and everything.

All through New Jersey we showed to claim agents and creditors, and didn’t take in money enough to buy meat for the animals.  He said the animals had all taken cold, and lay around dormant, and didn’t take any interest in the business, and the manager told pa he must think of something to wake the animals up.  Pa said he would leave it to me to wake ’em up, and get some ginger into them.  I told pa if I had five dollars to spend I could make every animal jump like a box car.  Pa gave me the money, and I went and bought five pounds of Scotchsnuff, and divided it up into ounce packages, and started during the afternoon performance at Wilmington, Del., to wake up the animals.

There is something peculiar about animals, if you try to give them anything that they think you want them to take, you can’t drive it down them with a pile driver, but if you try to hide something where they can reach it, they watch you out of one eye, and when you go away they look at you as much as to say:  “O, you think you are smart, don’t you?” Then they will go and dig it up, and play with it, and eat it if they want to.

I took my first package of snuff to the lion’s cage, and he was the sickest and most disgusted looking lion you ever saw, acting like a man who has taken a severe cold, and wants to kill anybody that looks at him.  The lion lay on the straw, stretched out full length, paying no attention to the crowd that passed his cage, and acting as though he wanted a hot whisky and his feet soaked in mustard water.  When he was not looking I hid the package of snuff under the straw, and rattled the straw a little, and he opened his eyes and looked at me as much as to say:  “You can’t fool old Shadrack, for I am onto you.”  I walked away behind the hyena cage, and Mr. Lion got up and stretched himself, and walked to the place where I put the paper of snuff, put his foot on it and broke the paper, and then he put his nose down and sniffed a sniff that drew the whole of the snuff up into his nose and lungs, and insides generally.

Gee, but you never saw such a change in a lion.  The crowd of visitors were right near his cage, when he sniffed, and when he got the snuff into him, he began to heave his sides like a man who is preparing to sneeze, caught his breath a few times, and let out a sneeze that sounded like the explosion of an automobile tire.  It threw cut feed all over the audience, and everybody ran away yelling that the lion busted.