Well, at Akron, the keeper of this elephant, Bolivar, had to go and see a girl that he met when the show was here last year, and settle a case of breach of promise before a justice of the peace, and the boss told pa to look after the elephant for an hour or so.  So pa took a pole with a hook in it and sat down on a bale of hay to watch Bolivar.  It was one of those hot days, and Bolivar stood drooping and perspiring, and wishing the show was in Alaska, and pa was kind of sleepy, like everybody in the show, when suddenly that elephant whooped, and swatted Jeanette, his wife, a couple of times, and she cried pitiful, and pa put the hook in Bolivar’s hide and gave a jerk, and told him to hush up that noise, but Bolivar just reared and pitched and walked right through the side of the menagerie tent, and seemed to say to the other animals:  “Come on, boys; there is going to be something doing,” and the animals all set up a howl in their own language, as though they were saying:  “Whooper up, old man, and don’t let them monkey with you.”

Bolivar went out in the street and mowed a wide swath, with pa after him, hooking him all the time, but he paid no attention to pa.  He put his head under the side of a street ear loaded with negroes that had come to see the show, dressed in their Sunday clothes, and tipped the car over on the side, and the negroes crawled through the windows and went uptown yelling murder, while Bolivar went in front of a grocery store where there was a pile of watermelons, and began to throw them at the people in the street, and the negroes thought an elephant was not so bad, so they came back and had a feast.

Pa tried to head off Bolivar at the grocery, but Bolivar took half a watermelon and put the red side on top of pa’s head, and squashed it down so the seeds and juice and pulp ran down pa’s shirt and neck, and he looked as though murder had been committed, but pa wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and showed game, because he kept mauling Bolivar with the hook.  Bolivar broke up a millinery store by throwing tomatoes at the women in the windows, and he went into a yard where a woman was washing and squirted the bluing water all over the woman, and all over pa, and then he chewed the clothes on the line, and drove the family over the fence.

[Illustration:  Bolivar Took Half a Watermelon and Put the Red Side on Top of Pa’s Head.]

You’d a died to see those milliners climb over a high board fence head first, and Bolivar actually seemed to laugh.  Bolivar run one of his tusks through a barrel of gasoline, and it run out on the street car track, and an electric spark set it on fire, and the fire department turned out, but the engines had to all go around Bolivar, ’cause he wouldn’t budge an inch, but seemed to say:  “Let ’er rip, boys; this is the Fourth of July.”

The circus men began to come with ropes and clubs, to tie Bolivar and throw him, but he escaped into a side street and watched the engines put out the fire, and he swung around with his trunk and tusks and wouldn’t let anyone come near him but pa with the hook, and he seemed to enjoy the prodding, but I guess that gave him courage to keep on doing things.