The monk took to me so, Pa said I must teach him everything I could that men do, so I thought it would do no harm to teach him to chew tobacco, ’cause he could already smoke cigarettes, so I borrowed a chew from the boss canvasman, a great big chew of black plug tobacco, and the monk grabbed it, and chewed it awhile, just before the afternoon performance, and swallowed it.  I knew that settled the monk, and when the audience came along by his cage, and pa was trying to get him to perform, as he did at Newport, eating dinner like a man, the monk turned pale, and his stomach ached, and he stood on his head, and held his stomach in both hands, and kicked the table over.  Then he hit pa a swat with his foot, and wound his tail around pa’s neck, and laid his head on pa’s shirt bosom, and was seasick.

Pa said:  “Well, this beats everything.  What did you do to him?”

I told pa I had only been teaching the monk manly tricks, and pa said:  “Well, you have overdone it.”  And then the Humane society had pa arrested for cruelty to animals.  But the monk got over it, and now he tries to be a masher, and winks at women, and flirts with them just as the men do at Newport.

* * * * *

We thought we were smart when we held up the railroad for damages back in Pennsylvania, after the wreck, but we are getting a dose of our own medicine.  At Poughkeepsie there came up a wind and rainstorm that blew the tent down right in the midst of the evening performance, and scared everybody half to death.  Several people were hit by tent poles and hurt some, and it was the wildest scene I ever saw, and people who got out alive ran away in the dark, and somebody said the animals had all got loose, and some of the people never stopped running till daylight the next morning.

Some run into the river, and the ambulances carried the injured to hospitals.  Pa stampeded with the elephants, and never showed up till noon the next day.  By that time at least 1,000 people had filed claims for damages, and all the lawyers from Albany to New York were on our trail.

The managers appointed pa to settle with the injured, and the way he argued with those people was a caution.  One old woman was killed, and pa tried to show her relatives that as she was old and helpless, and more or less a burden to the family, they ought to pay the show something for getting her off their hands.  One tramp had his feet cut off, and pa tried to show him how much he would save in shoes the rest of his life, and that he was in big luck.  We left pa at Poughkeepsie to settle the cases, and went on to New York, and we heard the people had lynched him, but he showed up in a couple of days with money left.  Now all the lawyers in New York are after us with claims and they have attached most everything, and the show is up against it.