Then I said to young Mr. Senator:  “Come on with your rats, now, and I win $50.”  All hands picked up the baskets and bags and went to the side of the ring and emptied the whole bunch of more than 500 into the ring.  The rats and mice rushed for the elephants, and then turned and made a rush for the reserved seats.

Oh, dear, what a time we had.  The elephants got down off that pyramid so quick it would make your head swim, and old Bolivar trumpeted in abject fear, and tried to break away, but pa came along with a tent stake and hit Bolivar over the head, and told the trainer to put the elephants back into the pyramid and hold them there till the bell rung for them to cease their stunt.  The trainer couldn’t do anything with them, and they bellowed and dodged mice and shied at rats, and Bolivar took his trunk and swatted pa clear across the ring.

[Illustration:  Bolivar Swatted Pa Clear Across the Ring.]

The elephants followed Bolivar to the main entrance, each elephant trying to walk on the heels of the one ahead of him, and all the circus hands trying to head off the elephants, but they wouldn’t head off.  They were simply scared to death, and they broke out the side of the tent near the lemonade stand and went whooping out into the open air and freedom, while the audience yelled with joy.

Young Mr. Senator said to me:  “What do you think of elephants now?”

I told him to take his money and he darned.

The audience was getting nervous, so the band struck up “A Hot Time in the Old Town,” and they were quieting down as the curtain raised and the horses for the chariot race came out.  Just then a woman with red socks got up on her chair in the press seats and pulled her dress away up and yelled, “Rats!” and another woman screamed and jumped up on a seat with her clothes at half mast, and yelled that there were mice on the seats.  In less than two minutes every woman in the audience, and the bearded woman, and the fat woman, were standing up on something, holding up their dresses and shaking their skirts and screaming, and when the fat woman fell into the arms of the bearded woman, in a faint, and the bearded woman dropped the fat woman, pa told the bearded woman he was ashamed of her screaming, ’cause she ought to be more of a man than that.

Well, every mouse and rat in the bunch seemed to be looking for women to scream at them, and there was no use trying to run a show with such an excited audience, so pa had the band play “Good Night, Ladies,” and he announced that the performance might be considered over for the afternoon.  Everybody made a rush for the exits.  Each woman held up her skirts and fairly galloped to get away from the mice and rats.