floundering in the muddy water; but there happened to be a sandbar under the water, so nobody was drowned, though we had to bail out the fat woman, she swallowed so much of the muddy river.  The giant was senseless and two reporters got astride of him, thinking it was a rail, and drifted ashore, while pa laid on his back and floated like a duck, and when we got him out we found he had a life-preserver under his coat, and he said he put it on because he had a hunch that those zebras would make for running water if they ever got beyond control.  Well, the crowd followed down to the river, and everybody was rescued, and the rest of the parade went over the route, and in the afternoon the tent was so full there were thousands standing up.

[Illustration:  The Zebras Turned Short and Tipped the Tally-ho Over Into the Water.]

When pa came into the main tent with the zebras, in the grand parade around the ring, the crowd gave him three cheers, which probably caused the management to refrain from discharging him on the spot.  Pa is like a cat, ’cause he always falls on his feet all right and he thinks the zebra tally-ho in the parade was the feature that caused the crowd to visit the show; but he says he will never drive zebras again, on account of the excitement.

The fat woman talks of having pa arrested for breaking one of her ribs when he held her down with his feet; but pa says his feet did not sink into her more than a foot or so, and he couldn’t have hit a rib, nohow.

Well, I’m glad to be back in the show, ’cause there is more going on than there was in the hospital, where I put in a week while the doctors were pulling the cactus pin feathers out of pa that grew out on him in Indian Territory.  Gee, but if I had to leave the circus business and go back to school, I know I should die of lonesomeness.

I got a chance to talk with pa at supper, and asked him if he was really crazy, as the hands say he is, and how he liked zebras, anyway, and he said:  “Hennery, zebras are just people, they stampede just like politicians and bankers, and business men generally, and never know enough to let well enough alone.  The mule is the only draft animal that always pulls straight and gets there right side up.”

If I was going to run a circus for easy money, and a picnic, I wouldn’t have any menagerie connected with it, ’cause the animals make more trouble than all the rest of the show.  They are just like a lot of children in a reform school, they don’t want to work, and they are just looking for a chance to fight when your back is turned, or to escape.  They don’t know where they would go if they did escape, but they don’t want anybody over them, to teach them morals, though when meal time comes the reform school boys and the menagerie animals eat like tramps, because the food is so good, and then kick because it isn’t better.  If your performers in the circus proper do not suit you can discharge them, and if they are sick you can leave them in a hospital, and go on with the show, and forget about them until they show up in a week or two, pale as ghosts, and weak as cats, and demand back salary; but your animal has to be taken along and petted, and when you give him medicine to save his life, he will try to bite your hand off.