Pecks Bad Boy with the Circus | Page 5

when they ride barebacked, but we had to
shut down on ma's going with the show, cause we never could have any
fun with a woman to look after. Pa says nowadays the men and women
who ride on bareback horses in the ring dress in regular evening
costume, the women with low-necked dresses and long trains, and the

men with swallow-tail coats and patent leather shoes, and they are as
polite as dancing masters.
We have compromised with ma, and she is to meet the show at
Kalamazoo and go with us to Kankakee and Keokuk until she is
overcome by nervous prostration, when we shall have her go home. Pa
thinks ma would last about two days with the show, but I guess if she
took a course of treatment with peanuts and red lemonade one
afternoon and evening, she would want to throw up her job, and go
back home in charge of a stomach specialist.
Well, pa showed up at the house in his circus clothes this afternoon,
and he certainly is a peach. Pa has been letting his chin whiskers grow
for about six weeks, and today he had them colored black, and he looks
as though he had swallowed the blacking brush, and left the bunch of
bristles outside, on his chin. He looks fierce. Then, he has got a new
brand of silk hat, with a wide, curling brim, and he has had a vest made
of black and blue check goods, the checks as big as the checks on a
checker board, and a pair of pants that look like a diamond-back
rattlesnake, and he has got an imitation diamond stud in his white shirt
that looks like a paper weight.
Ma wanted to know if there was any law to compel pa to dress like that,
'cause he looked as though he was a gambler or a train robber. Pa says
that a circus proprietor has got to look different from anybody else, in
order to inspire fear and respect on the part of the hands around the
show, as well as the audiences that flock to the arena, and he asked ma
if she didn't remember old Dan Rice, and old John Robinson. Ma didn't
remember them, but she remembered Barnum, because Barnum
lectured on temperance, and she said she hoped pa would emulate
Barnum's example, and pa said he would, and then he took a watch
chain with links as big as a trace chain and spread it across his
checkered vest, from one pocket to the other, with a life-size gold elk
hanging down the middle, and ma almost had a convulsion.
Gee, but if pa wears that rig in the menagerie tent the animals will paw
and bellow like a drove of cattle that smell blood. Pa is going to wear a
sack coat with his outfit, so as to look tough, and he wouldn't hear to

ma when she tried to get him to wear a frock coat. He said a frock coat
was all right in society or among the crowned heads, but when you
have to mingle with lions and elephants one minute that would snatch
the tail off a coat and chew it and the next minute you are mixed up
with a bunch of freaks or a lot of bareback riders or trapeze performers,
you have got to compromise on a coat that will fit any climate, and not
cause invidious remarks, whatever that is.
I will have to stand up beside the giant once in a while to show the
difference in the size of men, and at other times I will have to stand
beside the midgets and look like a giant myself. We are all packed up,
and in two days we start for the winter quarters of the show, to pound it
into shape for the road. By ginger, I can't hardly wait to get there and
see pa boss things.
CHAPTER II.
The Bad Boy Visits the Circus in Winter Quarters--He Meets the
Circus Performers--Dad Rides a Horse and Gets Tossed in a
Blanket--The Bad Boy Goes "Kangarooing"--Pa's Clothes Cause
Excitement Among the Animals--A Monkey Steals His Watch.
April 15.--We are now at the winter quarters of the show, in a little
town, on a farm just outside, where the tent is put up and the animals
are being cared for in barns, and the performers are limbering up their
joints, wearing overcoats to turn flip-flaps, and everybody has a cold,
and looks blue, and all are anxious for warm weather.
Pa created a sensation when we arrived by his stunning clothes, his jet
black chin whiskers and his watch chain over his checkered vest, and
when the proprietors introduced pa to the performers and hands, as an
old