The principal proprietor of the show came along, and when he saw pa with watermelon and bluing water all over him, and perspiration rolling down his face, he said to pa:  “Why don’t you take your elephant back to the lot, ’cause the afternoon performance is about to begin,” and that made pa mad, and he said:  “You go on with your afternoon performance, and I will have Bolivar there all right,” and then everybody laughed, but pa knew what he was about.

Pa dropped his hook and went to a hose cart and took a Babcock extinguisher and strapped it on his back and went up to Bolivar, who was tipping over some dummies in front of a clothing store, and pa said:  “Bolivar, you lay down,” but Bolivar threw a seven-dollar suit of clothes at pa, and bellowed, as much as to defy pa.  Pa turned the cock of the extinguisher, and pointed the nozzle at Bolivar’s head, and began to squirt the medicated water all over him.  For a moment Bolivar acted as though he couldn’t take a joke, and was going to start off again, but pa kept squirting, and when the chemical water began to eat into Bolivar’s hide, the big animal weakened, and trumpeted in token of surrender, and kneeled down in front of pa, and finally got down so pa could get on his back, and pa took the hook and hooked it in the flap of Bolivar’s ear, where is a tender spot, and he told Bolivar to get up and go back to the tent, and Bolivar was as meek as a lamb, and he got up, with pa on his back, and the fire extinguisher on pa’s back, and marched back to the tent, through the hole he had made coming out.  Thousands of people followed, and cheered pa, and when they got in the tent pa said to the principal owner of the show, who had made fun of him:  “Here’s your elephant, and whenever any of your old animals get on the warpath, and you want ’em rounded up, don’t forget my number, ’cause I can knock the spots out of any animal except a giraffe.”  The crowd cheered pa again and he got down off the elephant, took off his fire extinguisher, and handed Bolivar a piece of rag carpet, and said:  “Eat it, you old catamaran, or I’ll kill you,” and Bolivar was so scared of pa he eat the carpet, which shows the power of brain over avoirdupois, pa says.

[Illustration:  Pa Turned the Cock of the Extinguisher and Pointed the Nozzle at Bolivar’s Head.]

The regular keeper of Bolivar heard he was on the rampage, and he came back on the run to conquer him, after pa had got him back in the tent, but Bolivar looked at him with a faraway look in his eyes, as much as to say:  “Seems to me I have met you somewhere before, but a new king has been crowned,” and he took his old keeper by the back of his coat and threw him toward the monkey cage.  The monkeys gave the keeper the laugh, and Bolivar put his trunk lovingly on pa’s shoulder, and seemed to say:  “Old man, you are it, from this time out.”  Pa looked proud, and the old keeper looked sick.  The people in the show are going to present pa with a loving cup, and I guess he can run the menagerie part of the show.