wagon, and it went to sleep, and I put a veil over it, and was standing by the wagon talking with a peanut butcher, when the parents of the baby came back, and the woman raised up the veil to see if the child was asleep, when the monkey woke up and put its hairy hands up to rub it eyes.  The monkey looked up at the woman with beady eyes and began to chatter, and she yelled and her husband took a look at the monk, and he was mad.  They could both see it was a monkey instead of a baby, and they asked where the old man with the chin whiskers was that they left the baby with, and the peanut butcher said:  “What, that old guy with the checkered vest?  Why, he has gone with the baby over to the lion cage, where they are feeding the lions.  Don’t you see him holding the baby upon his shoulder?” By ginger, I never saw two people sprint the way they did, ’cause I guess they thought pa was sure crazy, and would give the baby to the lions.  But I told them the old man was all right, and would bring the baby back, and if he didn’t they could have the monkey, ’cause I didn’t want them to think they were going to be losers while attending our show.  Then I chucked the monkey under the chin and said:  “Maybe this is your baby, ’cause they change wonderfully when they get into a show.”

Well, I just had time to put the monkey back in the cage when I saw that couple surround pa, and the woman grabbed the baby out of his arms, and the man tackled pa around the legs below the knee, and threw pa down under the ostrich cage, and said:  “You kidnaper!  I am a good mind to choke the life out of you,” and he squeezed pa’s windpipe until pa’s tongue run out, when a canvasman came along and hit the man in the ear, and he laid down near a zebra, and the zebra kicked at the man and hit pa, ’cause a zebra is crosseyed and kicks like a woman throws a stone, and no man knows where it listeth.

[Illustration:  The Man Tackled Pa.]

Pa got up to murder the man that choked him, when the ostrich reached its head out between the bars of the cage and picked pa’s big diamond stud off his shirt, big as a piece of rock candy, and swallowed it, and pa said that’s the limit, and he called the manager and asked him how he was going to get his diamond stud out of the ostrich.  The manager told pa to go to the dressing-room and ask the woman who has charge of the wardrobe for the ostrich stomach pump, and when he got the stomach pump the manager said the ostrich would cough up the diamond stud.  Pa went off to the dressing-room to get the ostrich stomach pump, and I knew there was going to be trouble, ’cause I thought the manager was just stringing pa.