Well, it would kill you dead to see a fool boy side up to a hyena cage and try to hypnotize a hyena by kind words and a pious example, saying soothing words like:  “Soo, boss,” or “O, come off now, and be a good fellow,” and see the hyena snarl and show his teeth like an anarchist that a multi-millionaire might try to tame so he would take a roll of money out of his hand without biting the hand.  I have had boys stand in front of a hyena cage with a curry-comb and brush all day, trying to get on good terms with the hyenas, and occasionally the hyenas would forget to snarl and the boy would think the animals were beginning to weaken, and the boy would work up closer to the cage, and say:  “Pretty pussy,” and hold out his hand and say:  “Good fellow.”  Then the whole cageful of hyenas would make a rush for him, howling, snapping and scratching, with their bristles up, and the boy would fall backwards over a sacred cow.  About this time I would come along and ask the boy if he had got the hyenas curried, ’cause if he had, I wanted him to curry the grave robbers—­the jackals.  Then the boy would reluctantly give up his tools, and say if I wanted the hyenas and jackals curried off I could do it myself.  I would tell them they would never do for the circus business, ’cause faint heart never won fair hyena.  Then they would go home and sell their mother’s copper boiler to get money to pay their way in the show.  Gee, but I have saved lots of boys from a circus fate.

Pa has an awful time in the hospital, ’cause twice a day the doctors strip him and pull a mess of cactus thorns out of him, and he yells and don’t talk very pious.  The doctor told me I must try and think of something to divert pa’s mind from his suffering.

So I got some telegraph blanks and envelopes, and I have written messages from the show managers, twice a day.  The morning message would tell about the business of the day before, and how they missed pa.  Then I would add something like this:  “The farmers around Olathe are all inquiring for you,” or “The farmers around Topeka wish you were here, ’cause they want to give you a reception,” or “About 200 farmers at Parsons think we ought to let them in free, on account of being old friends of yours.”  The last one broke pa all up.  The message said:  “Many farmers from Atchison are going to come with us to Kansas City to confer with you on an old matter of business.”  Pa jumped like a box car off the track, and wanted the doctors to send him to a hospital at St. Louis, and he told the doctors the reason, but they cheered him up by saying that if any mob came to the hospital after him, they would hide him in the pickling vat, and make the mob believe he was dead.  That is the way it stands now.  But pa is not so darn happy as I have seen him, though I try to do all I can to keep his mind off his trouble.  I tell him as long as his conscience is clear, he is all right, but he says:  “But, Hennery, that’s the trouble; it ain’t clear.  Well, let us have peace, at any price.”