We got downtown, to a wide street, and there was a fire alarm ahead, or something, and the procession stopped, and the manager and chief of police disappeared, and there was a wagon load of green corn stalks right beside the lead team, which a farmer was taking to a silo, but he had stopped his team to see the parade.  The three teams of pa’s leaders, six horses, began to eat the corn stalks, and the camels, that were behind us, worked along up by the band wagon and began to eat, and the farmer got scared to see his corn stalks disappearing, so he drove off on a side street, and started for the silo, and by ginger, pa’s team turned onto the side street and followed the wagon of corn stalks, and pa couldn’t hold them, and the band played, “In the Good Old Summer Time, There Will Be a Hot Time in the Old Town.”

The camels kept up with the farmer’s wagon, too, and the whole parade followed the band.  The farmer started his horses into a run, and the team of ten horses that was driving pa started to galloping, and I looked back, and the elephants were beginning to gallop, and all the cages were coming whooping, and it was a picnic.  The band stopped playing, and the players were scared, and as we were crossing a little bridge over a small stream, on the edge of town, I turned around to the band and told them to jump for their lives, and they all made a jump for the stream, and the air was full of uniforms and instruments, and they landed in the stream all right.

We went on up a hill, and were in the country, and the farmer turned into a farmyard, and the band wagon followed, and the farmer jumped off the corn stalk wagon and rushed for the house, and pa’s ten-horse team surrounded the wagon, and every horse was eating corn stalks, and the team was all mixed up.  The camels and the elephants crowded in for the nice green lunch, and the farmer’s wife came out with her apron waving, and said “Shoo,” but none of the animals shooed worth a cent, and pa pulled on the lines, and yelled, while the rest of the parade came into the farm and lined up.  The drivers yelled at pa to know where in thunder he was going, and pa said:  “Damfino.”

Just then the manager and chief of police came up, and the way they talked to pa was awful.  Pa couldn’t explain how it was that he took the parade out in the country, and you never saw such a time.

By this time the regular drivers had arrived on a special, from where we left them with a hot box, and they took possession of the teams, and we got back to the circus lot in time for the afternoon performance.  I don’t know what they are doing to pa, but they had him in the manager’s tent all the afternoon with some doctors, who seem to be examining him for insanity.

Everybody about the show thinks pa has hoodooed the aggregation, but pa says such things are always happening, and it is wrong to blame him.

The farmer got paid for his corn stalks, and it is to be charged up to pa.