slip and fall down. Of course I laugh. That's because I'm superior to
you. I didn't fall down. Same thing if your hat blows off. I laugh
while you chase it down the street. I'm superior. My hat's still on my
head. Same thing with the monkey band. All the fool things of it make
us feel so superior. We don't see ourselves as foolish. That's why we
pay to see the monkeys behave foolish."

It was scarcely a matter of training the monkeys. Rather was it the
training of the men who operated the concealed mechanisms that made the
monkeys perform. To this Harris Collins was devoting his effort.

"There isn't any reason why you fellows can't make them play a real tune.
It's up to you, just according to how you pull the wires. Come on. It's
worth going in for. Let's try something you all know. And remember, the
regular orchestra will always help you out. Now, what do you all know?
Something simple, and something the audience'll know, too?"

He became absorbed in trying out the idea, and even borrowed a circus
rider whose act was to play the violin while standing on the back of a
galloping horse and to throw somersaults on such precarious platform
while still playing the violin. This man he got merely to play simple
airs in slow time, so that the assistants could keep the time and the air
and pull the wires accordingly.

"Of course, if you make a howling mistake," Collins told them, "that's
when you all pull the wires like mad and poke the leader and whirl him
around. That always brings down the house. They think he's got a real
musical ear and is mad at his orchestra for the discord."

In the midst of the work, Johnny and Michael came along.

"That guy says he wouldn't take him for a gift," Johnny reported to his
employer.

"All right, all right, put him back in the kennels," Collins ordered
hurriedly.--"Now, you fellows, all ready! 'Home, Sweet Home!' Go to it,
Fisher! Now keep the time the rest of you! . . . That's it. With a full
orchestra you're making motions like the tune.--Faster, you, Simmons. You
drag behind all the time."

And the accident happened. Johnny, instead of immediately obeying the
order and taking Michael back to the kennels, lingered in the hope of
seeing the orchestra leader whirled chattering around on his stool. The
violinist, within a yard of where Michael sat squatted on his haunches,
played the notes of "Home, Sweet Home" with loud slow exactitude and
emphasis.