First they offered pa dog to eat, but he had swore off on dog, and passed on it, and that made the cannibals mad, and they got ready to roast pa, and I guess they would have eaten him half cooked, if it hadn’t been for the performers and freaks who had missed their pet dogs, and the circus hands told them the cannibals had just gone to the woods with a mess of dogs to roast for a dog feast.

Well, they were just getting a fire around pa, and he was giving the grand hailing sign of distress, when the performers, headed by the fat woman, whose peeled Mexican dog was lost in the shuffle, came in amongst the cannibals, and pa and the other dogs were rescued, in the darnedest fight I ever saw.  The performers just walked right over the cannibals, and mauled them with stakes, and all the dogs that had not been killed were pulled away from the heathen, and saved.  The fat woman got her dog all right, and when pa came up from the stake where they were going to burn him, and congratulated her on recovering her dog, she turned on pa and accused him of being the leading cannibal, and that he was the one who put up the whole job to steal the dogs.  She jabbed him with a parasol, but pa was innocent.

[Illustration:  The Fat Woman Jabbed Pa with Her Parasol.]

The Indians got back to the tent along towards morning, and the cannibals went back with us, and we had to feed them on wieners, which was the nearest to roast dog we could get for them at that time of night.

Pa seems to get it in the neck in this show, ’cause everything that goes wrong is laid to him, and if anything goes right, somebody else gets the credit, and I think he would resign if it was not for his pride.  After the trouble about the Indians and the cannibals the manager called pa up and reprimanded him for indulging the tribes in their wild orgies, and said he couldn’t maintain discipline as long as pa mixed up with them and encouraged them in such things.

Pa tried to explain that he was the victim instead of being the cause of the dog roast, but the manager dismissed pa by telling him not to let it occur again.  Then to show the inconsistency of the manager, he ordered pa to go on ahead of the show to New York, and advertise that the cannibals in our show would give an exhibition of roasting and eating a human being, and to offer a reward for anybody that would consent to be roasted and eaten in public.

Pa has gone to New York to look for somebody who will take the position of meat for the cannibals, and he is instructed to spare no expense to find such a man.  He thinks he may find somebody connected with the Life Insurance scandal, who has lost all desire to live any longer, and who will gladly go into this “mutual” scheme.  I don’t know.

This circus business is too much for me, ’cause I am losing friends all the time.  Even the monkeys have got so they seem to be ashamed to be seen talking to me, and when I pass the monkey cage they turn their backs on me, as though I did not belong to their set.  When a fellow gets so low that monkeys feel above him, and throw out sarcastic remarks when he goes by, it is time to change your luck some way.