[Illustration:  The Camel Kicked an Arab Off a Rug.]

The sacred cow got her horseradish first, and I could see she was trying to hold it without giving the snap away, till her husband, the bull, got his.  Well, it was pitiful, and I made up my mind I would never play a joke on the sacred cattle again, ’cause it seems like sacrilege.  The bull finally got his horseradish down, and he was the most astonished animal I ever saw.  He swelled up, and then bellowed until the cow looked as though she would sink through the ground, saying; “Excuse me, dear, but I am not to blame, because I, too, have a hot box.”  The bull acted just as human as could be, ’cause he looked mad at her, and was going to gore her to death, when pa and some of the hands came up and hit him with a tent stake, and swore at him, and he quit fighting his wife, just like a man.  Pa wanted to know what in thunder was the matter with the animals, and wanted to know if I had fed them the turnips, and I told him they had all been fed, and just then the giraffe, whose neck was so long the horseradish did not reach a vital spot as quick as it did with the hippo, began to yell for the police and dance around.  Finally he stood on his head and neck, with his heels against a cage, and coughed like he had caught pneumonia.  Pa said to the boss canvasman:  “Well, what do you think of that?”

The zebras had their inning next, and after they had swallowed their rations of horseradish, they never said a word, but began to run around like dancing the lancers, and when they got to going it looked like a kaleidoscope, and the six zebras looked like a million.  Pa said:  “I never saw such a sight since I used to drink, but I have either got the jim-jams, or something awful has happened to this menagerie.”

The educated hog got a double dose, and he squealed and couldn’t pick out the right card, and then the llamas got busy on their portion of horseradish, and they cried in Spanish, and stood on their hind legs and shed tears.  Pa got so rattled he looked ten years older than he did when the afternoon performance opened.  The manager of the big show came in to know why the elephants had not been sent into the dressing-room, to be got ready for the grand entree.  Just then the elephants began to eat their horseradish, and when they were driven into the big tent they were complaining about something being wrong inside of them, and as they came by the lemonade stand they seemed to be yelling “Fire!” Then they all stopped at the stand and began to drink the lemonade out of the barrels, which seemed to put out the fire.