places.  You ride like mad, your clothes or your reputation torn by briars if it is a bear, or by opposition newspapers if it is a political campaign, and you wish it was over, many times, and are so tired you wish you were dead.  Finally your bear or your opponent in politics is treed and the dogs are trying to climb the tree, and your bear or your political opponent is up on a limb snarling and showing his teeth at the dogs or the politicians, and then you ride up, look the ground over, wait till your heart stops beating and fire the shot at a vital part, and your bear or your political opponent comes tumbling to the ground.  When he ceases to kick you put your foot on his neck and feel sorry you killed him, but you go to work and skin him and hang his hide on the fence.  Then you have got to ride all night to get to camp, if it is a bear, and work harder than a man on a treadmill for four years, if it is a presidential candidate you have skun.”

I had sat with my mouth open while the president talked, and never said a word, but when he quit I said:  “Yes, but suppose when you got your bear skun, another bear should come after you and dare you to knock a chip off his shoulder, and growl, and walk sideways with his bristles all up, would you run, or would you stand your ground?”

“We better change the subject,” said the president, and rose from the table, and we all got up.  He patted me on the head, and said:  “Tell your pa I will see him later, and in the meantime, you run your circus and I will try to run mine.”

The queerest thing happened that night.  The senator’s boy spoke of our trained seals, that catch a fish if you throw it to them and swallow it whole.  He said it would be fun to take a little alarm clock and sew it up in a fish, and set the alarm at seven o’clock p. m., when the crowd is watching the seals swallow fish, and throw it to the big seal, and the alarm would go off inside him.

Well, I bit like a bass, and said we would do it, so he took a little alarm clock and set it for seven o’clock.  We got it into a fish, and I am ashamed to tell what happened.  Gee, but that seal grabbed the fish with a clock in it, and tried to swallow it, but the brass ring caught on one of his teeth, and he was trying to get it loose when the alarm went off, and the seal jumped out of the tank and began to prance around the crowd, scaring the women, and making all the animals nervous.  He stood on his head and bellowed, and all the circus hands came rushing up.  Finally the alarm clock quit jingling, and they caught the seal and pulled the clock off his tooth, and just then pa came up to me and said:  “What deviltry you boys up to now?  Suppose that seal had swallowed that clock, and you couldn’t wind it up; it might kill him.  Now, go to the car, ’cause we are going to get out of this town right off.  You make me tired.”  And pa helped to lift the slippery seal into the tank, and looked mad at his little boy, and hurt the feelings of the senator’s boy.