and let 'em get away from him, but when he sees 'em he takes his tin
whistle out of his pocket and goes back to the show, tooting it like a
blasted Pied Piper, the snakes following along as meek as Mary's little
lamb, and most of the audience goes with him at a quarter per."

"Did business improve?" asked the Stranger.

"Improve? Why, my boy, after we put that temperance show out of business
we just turned 'em away for three months. Not only did we do a good
business, but the hotel people put us on the free list at the bar,
because Merritt used to take 'em down in 'Interminable Snake' formation
for a dip in the ocean every morning, and the hotel press agent wrote it
up as the daily appearance of the gigantic sea serpent."

KALSOMINING AN ELEPHANT

KALSOMINING AN ELEPHANT

A delegation from the National Association of Press Agents which was
holding its annual meeting in the interests of the Furtherance of Truth
and the Elevation of the Show Business had left the meeting place in New
York, and after inspecting the various moral and entertaining
performances at Coney Island was gathered about one of the white-topped
tables near the Dreamland tower. Colonel Tody Hamilton, prince of press
agents, master of a picturesque vocabulary, inventor of superlatives in
the English language and champion of veracity, pointed laughingly toward
the Arena, where the Proprietor of the trained animal exhibition was
instructing a new barker how to make the most out of a trick of one of
the elephants which was being used for ballyhoo purposes in front of
the entrance to his show.

"Listen to him, gentlemen, and you will be convinced that he is eligible
to membership in our truth-loving fraternity," he remarked admiringly.
The ungainly pachyderm was standing on its hind legs, trumpeting through
its upraised trunk a protest against the prodding of the sharp goad
which was forcing it to walk backward in that absurd position. The voice
of the Proprietor, who was using a megaphone, came to them distinctly as
he invited the people to look at "One of the greatest triumphs of the
animal trainer's art; something which has never been exhibited in any
country--an elephant WALKING UPON ITS HIND LEGS, BACKWARD!"

The speech caught and held the attention of the crowd, and when the
elephant was allowed to rejoin its companions and the three great beasts
entered the building in single file, Tom grasping Roger's tail in his
trunk and Alice