politely requested
Boswell to go to a warmer section of the country, Shem resumed.

"I caught him in the act of swallowing five cows and Ham's favorite
trotter, sulky and all."

Baron Munchausen rose up and left the room.

"If they're going to lie I'm going to get out," he said, as he passed
through the room.

"What became of Fido?" asked Boswell.

"The sulky killed him," returned Shem, innocently. "He couldn't digest
the wheels."

Noah looked approvingly at his son, and, turning to Barnum, observed,
quietly:

"What he says is true, and I will go further and say that it is my belief
that you would have found the show business impossible if I had taken
that sort of creature aboard. You'd have got mightily discouraged after
your Antediluvians had chewed up a few dozen steam calliopes, and eaten
every other able-bodied exhibit you had managed to secure. I'd have
tried to save a couple of Discosaurians if I hadn't supposed they were
able to take care of themselves. A combination of sea-serpent and
dragon, with a neck twenty-two feet long, it seemed to me, ought to have
been able to ride out any storm or fall of rain; but there I was wrong,
and I am free to admit my error. It never occurred to me that the sea-
serpents were in any danger, so I let them alone, with the result that I
never saw but one other, and he was only an illusion due to that unhappy
use of stimulants to which, with shocking bad taste, you have chosen to
refer."

"I didn't mean to call up unpleasant memories," said Barnum. "I never
believed you got half-seas over, anyhow; but, to return to our muttons,
why didn't you hand down a few varieties of the Therium family to
posterity? There were the Dinotherium and the Megatherium, either one of
which would have knocked spots out of any leopard that ever was made, and
along side of which even my woolly horse would have paled into
insignificance. That's what I can't understand in your selections; with
Megatheriums to burn, why save leopards and panthers and other such every-
day creatures?"

"What kind of a boat do you suppose I had?" cried Noah. "Do you imagine
for a moment that she was four miles on the water-line, with a mile and
three-quarters beam? If I'd had a pair of Dinotheriums in the stern of
that Ark, she'd have tipped up fore and aft, until she'd have looked like
a telegraph-pole in the water, and if I'd put 'em amidships they'd have
had to be wedged in so tightly they couldn't