Pecks Bad Boy with the Circus | Page 7

going on, and he said: "Here, you
heathen, you quit this hazing right here," and they let pa down on the
floor of the ring, and he got up and pulled his pants down, that had got
up above his knees, and shook himself and took out his roll, and peeled
off a $20 bill and gave it to the canvasman, and he shook hands with
them all, and said he liked a joke as well as anybody, and for them to
spend the money to have a good time, and they all laughed and patted
pa on the back, and said he was a dead game sport, and would be an
honor to the profession, and that now that he has taken the first degree
as a circus man he could call on them for any sacrifice, or any work,
and he would find that they would be Johnny on the spot.
Then he went out to the dining tent and took dinner with the crowd and
had a jolly time. There was a woman trapeze performer on one side of
pa at dinner, and she began to kick at once about the meals, and when
the waiter brought a piece of meat to us all--a great big piece, that
looked like corned beef, she said: "For heaven's sake, ain't that elephant

that died all been eaten up yet?" and then she told pa that they had been
fed on that deceased elephant, until they all felt like they had trunks
growing out of their heads, and pa poked the meat with his fork, and
thought it was elephant, and he lost his appetite, and everybody
laughed. I eat some of it and if it was elephant it was all right.
Well, when dinner was about over, all filled their glasses to drink to the
health of pa, the old stockholder and new manager, and pa got up and
bowed, and made a little speech, and when he sat down one of the
circus girls was in his chair, and he sat in her lap, and the crowd all
yelled, except a Spanish bull-fighter who seemed to be the husband of
the woman pa sat on, and he wanted pa's blood, but the old circus
manager took him away to save pa from trouble, and he glared back at
pa, and I think he will stab pa with a dirk knife.
We got out of the dining tent, and went to the barn, where the animals
are kept all winter, and pa wanted me to become familiar with the
habits of the beasts, 'cause they were to be in pa's charge, with the
keepers of the different kinds of animals to report to pa. Nobody need
tell me that animals have no human instincts, and do not know how to
take a joke. We are apt to think that wild animals in captivity are
worrying over being confined in cages, and gazed at and commented on
by curious visitors, and that they dream of the free life they lived in the
jungles, and sigh to go back where they were, captured, and prowl
around for food, but you can't fool me. Animals that formerly had to go
around in the woods, hungry half the time and occasionally gorging
themselves on a dead animal and sleeping out in the rain in all kinds of
weather, know when they have struck a good thing in a menagerie, with
clean straw to sleep in, and when they are hungry all they have to do is
to sound their bugle and they have pre-digested beefsteak and breakfast
food brought to them on a silver platter, and if the food is not to their
liking they set up a kick like a star boarder at a boarding house. Their
condition in the show, in its changed condition from that of their native
haunts, is like taking a hobo off the trucks of a freight train and taking
him to the dining car of the limited, and letting him eat to a finish.
People talk about animals escaping from captivity, and going back to
the jungles and humane societies shed tears over the poor, sad-eyed

captives, sighing for their homes, but you turn them loose at South
Bend, and run your circus train to New Albany without them and they
would follow the train and overtake it before the evening performance
the next day, and you would find them trying to break into their cages
again, and they would have to be fed.
When pa and I went into the barn where the cages were, to take an
account of stock, and get acquainted with our animals, they acted just
like the circus men did when they saw pa's clothes. The animals were
about half asleep when