What a difference it makes who wants damages.  When we were working the railroad for damages, it was a cinch, and like getting money from home, but now that the people are working us for damages, for being smashed up under our tent, we look upon it as a crime, and tell them it is an act of Providence, and that the show is not to blame for a windstorm.  But the lawyers can’t be very pious, for they won’t believe in the act of Providence racket, and we shall have to cough up all the profits of the season.

Since we got settled in New York for a two weeks’ stand, in Madison Square Garden, we are having the tents repaired, and don’t have to put up and take down tents, and ride all night on trains.  We are all stopping at hotels and getting rested, and pa is having a chance to shine.

The managers think pa is trying to commit suicide, for he wants to take the place of anybody who is sick or drunk, and is the understudy of everybody.  We got one act that just curdles your blood, a cage in the ring, with lions and tigers and leopards, who go through all kinds of stunts.  One lion rides a horse and jumps through hoops, and lands on the back of the horse, and jumps on a staging and lets the horse go around the ring, and then jumps on again.  The horse is blindfolded, so he don’t know it is a lion that jumps on his back, but thinks it is a man.

The tigers ride bicycles, and the leopards jump about wherever the trainer tells them to; a monkey acts as clown, and a little elephant runs a make-believe automobile.  That act alone is worth the price of admission.

Well, the regular trainer went to Coney Island, and got drunk, and we either had to cut out that performance, or give back the money, and the manager was wailing about it, ’cause nothing makes a circus man wail like giving back good money.  Then pa said he would save the day by taking charge of the animal act.  He said he had watched it every day, and knew how to do it, and he could dress up in the clothes of the regular trainer, and the animals wouldn’t know the difference.  Gee, but I was scared to have pa try to run that animal show, and I think everyone in the show believed it would be pa’s finish.  I felt like an orphan when pa came out of the dressing-room with the trainer’s clothes on, though pa’s stomach was so big you would think a blindfolded horse would know pa was no trainer.

Well, pa went in the round cage made of bar iron, and motioned to the attendants to send the animals into the cage through the chute from the animal quarters.  The first to come were two tigers that were to ride velocipedes.  I trembled for pa when they went in and waved their tails and looked at pa as much as to say:  “O, we won’t do a thing to you.”  They actually looked at each other and winked; but pa motioned to the velocipedes, and looked fierce, and when they hesitated about getting on, pa said:  “You won’t, won’t you,” and he took a club filled with lead and