elephants would stampede, and he would bet five dollars on it.  I excused myself for a moment and told pa what the senator’s son offered to bet, and pa said:  “Here’s $50, and you can take all the bets you can get.  Why, this herd of elephants would walk on mice, and rats, too.  You bet with him and tell him to bring along all the rats and mice he can find in the white house, and you can turn them into the ring Monday afternoon when the elephants do their turn, and if an elephant bats an eye I will eat his ears for mushrooms.”

I went back to young Mr. Senator and took his bet, and told him I had plenty more money to bet the same way, and he said the next afternoon he would come with his mice and rats, and a lot of money to bet that you couldn’t hold that flock of elephants with log chains when he opened his bag of rats and mice.

Well, how it got into the papers I do not know, but the next morning they all said an interesting experiment would be made the next afternoon at the great and only circus, to determine once and for all whether elephants were afraid of mice, and that a senator’s son and a son of one of the proprietors of the show would conduct the experiment by turning loose a lot of mice and rats in the rings at precisely 3:30 p.m.

Well, you never saw such a crowd in a circus as we had that afternoon.  It seemed as though the whole population turned out, foreign ministers, negroes, society people and clerks.  That senator’s son and the whole family, and the neighbors, must have been up all night catching mice and rats, and it took nine boys and three servants to carry the baskets and traps and bags of mice and rats.  I passed them all in and we lined up on a front seat to wait for the elephant stunt, and when the thing was ripe we were to empty the whole mess of vermin into the ring.

I felt as though something was wrong ’cause I saw the new moon over my left shoulder the night before, and now I wish I had died before this thing happened.  When the Japanese jugglers went out of the ring I knew that was the cue for the elephants to come in, and when the dressing room curtain was pulled aside and old Bolivar came out at the head of the herd, and they marched around the outside of the ring, clear around the tent, my heart jumped up into my throat, and I felt sick.

The senator’s son said:  “When these rats and things begin to chase your old elephants, you won’t be able to see their tails for the dust they will kick up.”

Then I thought of the money pa had given me to bet, and I offered to bet it all, and a negro produced funds and took all my bets like a bookmaker.

Well, after doing a turn around the big ring, the trainer steered the elephants into the middle ring, and the great audience leaned forward to catch every trick the elephants did.

Us boys held on to the bags that the mice and things were in, waiting for our cue.  The elephants stood on their heads and hind feet, and fore feet, laid down, fired pistols, and did everything just right, without making a mistake.  Finally the trainer formed the whole herd into a grand pyramid, with old Bolivar in the center, each elephant holding an American flag with his trunk, and waving it, and the audience broke out into a cheer that fairly ripped the canvas.