were thousands of people, the stale beer seemed to be getting in its work, for the elephant looked at the people, as much as to say:  “Now I will show you something not down on the bills,” and, by ginger, if he didn’t raise up his hind quarters and stand on his front feet, right by the side of a big fountain, and he reached in his trunk for a drink, when all of us on the pagoda clung to pa, and we all slid right off into the big basin of water.  The fountain played on us, and pa was under water, with the four Circassian beauties, and when we rolled or slid down over the elephant’s head, he looked at us and seemed to chuckle:  “What you getting off here for, the show ain’t half out.”

Well, the parade went on and left the elephant and the rest of us at the fountain, and to show that animals understand each other, and can appreciate a joke, every animal that passed us gave us the laugh, even the hippopotamus, which opened his mouth as big as a tunnel, and showed his teeth and acted as though he would like to exchange tanks with us.

The circus people that could be spared from the wagons came to help us, and the citizens helped out the Circassian beauties who were praying to Allah, and wringing out their clothes, and I crawled up on the neck of a cast-iron swan in the fountain.  Pa yelled and talked profane, and told ’em to bring a cannon and kill the elephant, which kept ducking him with his trunk, and swabbing out the bottom of the fountain basin with pa.  It seemed as though he never would get through using pa for a mop, but finally the people got a rope around pa, and a keeper got an iron hook in the elephant’s ear, and they pulled pa out on one side, and got the elephant away on the other side, and just then the callipoe, that ends the parade, came by us and played the “Blue Danube,” and the elephant got on his hind feet and waltzed on the pavement.  They put pa and the Circassian beauties in a patrol wagon and took them to the show lot, and I sat by the driver, and he let me drive the team.

[Illustration:  The Elephant Kept Ducking Pa and Swabbing Out the Bottom of the Fountain.]

Pa had his sheik clothes rolled up around his waist, and was wringing them out, and talking awful sassy, and when we got to the lot it took a long time to convince the policemen that we were not guilty of disorderly conduct, and just then the elephant came tearing by us, with the keeper on horseback behind him, prodding him in the ham every jump with a sharp iron, and he went through the side of the tent as though he was mighty sorry he didn’t kill us all.

They made him get down on his knees and bellow in token of surrender, and then we all went and changed our clothes for the afternoon performance.  As we passed through the menagerie tent, dripping, every animal set up a yell, as much as to say:  “There, maybe you will give cayenne pepper to a pious sacred cow again, confound you,” and that convinces me that animals are human.