of many accidents which had happened to himself and his employees, most
of them through their own carelessness, born of constant association
with their charges who never miss the opportunity which the shortest
instant of forgetfulness gives them.

[Illustration: _"A constant procession of small animals moving down his
throat."_]

"I said that bear attack was the worst sight I ever saw, and it was; but
something happened here last year which impressed me more because it was
so mysterious. A friend of mine in Florida shipped me a box of rattlers,
which he wrote had been 'attended to,' and I supposed that their poison
fangs had been extracted. They were delivered just before the
performance started and I ripped a board off the box and stuck my hand
in, grabbing them one by one and throwing them into the den as if they
were garter snakes.

"The man who took care of the snakes was out on the ballyhoo, walking
around with the gander following him to advertise the show; and when he
came in he looked them over and found that each one had as pretty a pair
of fangs as you would wish to see. He told me about it and I confess
that it gave me a gone feeling in the pit of my stomach, for I
remembered how I had felt around for them in the box with my bare
hands.

"I am pretty busy while a performance is going on, so I told him to let
them alone until I had a chance to examine them. Ninety per cent. of the
accidents which occur in a menagerie comes from the disregard of
ordinary precautions or the disobedience of orders, and I had a
presentiment that something was going to happen and I was keeping an
extra vigilant eye on the performers in the big exhibition cage. Well,
it happened, all right; but not in the way that I expected.

"The snake man instead of getting back on the ballyhoo where he
belonged, stood around the snake cage, watching the new rattlers, and
along came a couple of gazabos who commenced talking about them. One of
them was the wise guy, who always knows about how the animals are doped
so they won't bite and all that other information which isn't so. He
commenced explaining how the snakes were harmless, because their teeth
had been pulled, and giving a lot of misinformation about them. The
snake man listened until he couldn't stand it any longer and then he
stuck his hand into the cage and grabbed one of the rattlers by the
neck.

"'Fangs pulled, eh?' says he, and he made the rattler open his mouth and
show a p