Well, I always gave such boys a job watering the camels, and after they had carried water from daylight till dark, and had seen it disappear down a camel, and the camels grumbling because they didn’t bring water faster, the boys would ask me how long it look to fill up a camel, anyway.  I would tell them that if they kept right at work, the camels ought to be filled up full along in the fall.  The boys would reluctantly resign.  Our camels have been the making of hundreds of boys by their tank-like capacity to hold water.  One boy at Richmond, Va., got it on me by getting a section of fire hose and hitching it to a hydrant, and letting the water run into a trough at the camel stand in the menagerie, and before I knew it the camels had filled up until they were swelled four times as big as they ought to be.  Then they laid down, and couldn’t march in the grand entree, and pa sent for a plumber to have the camels fixed with faucets.  That boy was a genius, and we kept him and put him into the lemonade privilege.  You can fill a camel with a hydrant all right, but if you bring the water in pails he will beat the game.

I remember one boy at Wilmington, Del., who insisted on going along with the show, ’cause his mother made him work after school, and my heart was touched, ’cause I know how a boy hates to work after school, so I gave him a job sprinkling insect powder on the buffaloes, that were scratching themselves against the tent poles so much that I felt they had something alive concealed about their persons.  That boy started in with his can of insect powder on a buffalo calf, and then he filled the cow’s hair full of the powder, and when he started on the bull, the bull took a sniff of the powder on the cow, and got it up his nose, and he held his head up kind of scared like, and turned his upper lip wrong-side out, and began to paw the ground.  Then he made a charge on that boy, and tossed him through the tent, and I looked through the hole, and saw the boy scratching gravel towards town.  If he is not running yet, he is probably doing chores for his mother both before and after school.

[Illustration:  The Bull Tossed the Boy Through the Tent.]

I have discouraged most of the boys who wanted to run away and go with the show, by giving them a curry comb and brush and telling them they could have a permanent job currying off the hyenas.  Most boys would look sort of dubious about it, but would think it was up to them to be game, and they would take the curry comb and brush all right.  I would take them to the cage, and tell them to just talk soothing to the hyenas through the bars, and when the hyenas began to get tame and act as though it would give them pleasure to be curried off, and laid down and rolled over, and purred like a cat that wanted to be scratched, and acted as though they would eat out of one’s hand, the boys might call me, and I would have the cage opened and they could go in and curry them off.