Well, Monday morning the parade started, and along about the middle of the parade, just ahead of the calliope, was pa and his six zebra team, his freaks and reporters, and pa handled the ribbons like a pirate.  The fat woman sat on the driver’s seat with pa, for ballast, and the rest of the freaks were sandwiched in between the reporters.  We went along all right for half a mile, the circus hands walking beside the zebras, to kill them if they tried to jump over a house, while I rode the bell mule.  If I had been planning the zebra business, I would have picked out a level town to try it on, but Kansas City is all hills and ravines, and going up hill the zebras’ tally-ho had to be pushed by a couple of elephants, ’cause the zebras wouldn’t pull the load, and going down hill we had to lock the wheels, and slide down.

When we got on the main street, where the crowd filled both sides, almost up to the team, and the people began to cheer, the zebras began to waltz and kick, and try to jump over each other, but the hands got them untangled, and we worried along, though pa was pale, and looked like a man smoking a cigar while sitting on an open powder keg.  The fat woman grabbed pa every little while, and screamed that she wanted to get off and walk, but pa told her to hush up and try to be a man.

Well, as we were going down hill, by a park, near the Midland hotel, that confounded calliope had got right up behind the tally-ho, and the organist cut her loose, with the tune:  “A Life on the Ocean Wave.”  Every zebra jumped into the air, the brake footpiece escaped pa’s foot, and the tally-ho run on to the heels of the wheel zebras, and it was all off.  There never was such a runaway since the days of Ben Hur.  Pa had presence of mind enough to make the fat lady get down off the seat, and he put his feet on her to hold her down, the crowd yelled, and our zebras run into the cage ahead, containing the behemoth of Holy Writ, and knocked off a hind wheel, and every wagon ahead was either tipped over or disabled.  The people fairly went wild, thinking the runaway was a part of the show.  The giant fainted from fright, ’cause he always was a coward; the bearded woman threw her arms around a reporter, and scratched his face with her whiskers, while the Circassian girl got her white wig caught In the branch of a tree and lost it, and she was as bald as an ostrich egg.  Pa took out the whip and larruped the zebras, to put some new stripes on them.

[Illustration:  There Never Was Such a Runaway Since the Days of Ben-Hur.]

When we passed the camels they thought they were in the race, and they buckled in to keep up, and the chariot horses got the best of the drivers and they joined in.  My mule kept up all right, and we went down the hill on to the level ground that runs to the Missouri river.  When we got to the river the zebras turned short and tipped the tally-ho over into the water and the whole bunch on the coach was