me direction. We were loosely strung out. I
noticed the bull, a strapping policeman in a gray suit. He was coming
along the middle of the street, without haste, merely sauntering. I
noticed casually that he changed his course, and was heading obliquely
for the same sidewalk that I was heading for directly. He sauntered
along, threading the strung-out crowd, and I noticed that his course
and mine would cross each other. I was so innocent of wrong-doing
that, in spite of my education in bulls and their ways, I apprehended
nothing. I never dreamed that bull was after me. Out of my respect for
the law I was actually all ready to pause the next moment and let him
cross in front of me. The pause came all right, but it was not of my
volition; also it was a backward pause. Without warning, that bull had
suddenly launched out at me on the chest with both hands. At the same
moment, verbally, he cast the bar sinister on my genealogy.

All my free American blood boiled. All my liberty-loving ancestors
clamored in me. "What do you mean?" I demanded. You see, I wanted an
explanation. And I got it. Bang! His club came down on top of my head,
and I was reeling backward like a drunken man, the curious faces of
the onlookers billowing up and down like the waves of the sea, my
precious book falling from under my arm into the dirt, the bull
advancing with the club ready for another blow. And in that dizzy
moment I had a vision. I saw that club descending many times upon my
head; I saw myself, bloody and battered and hard-looking, in a
police-court; I heard a charge of disorderly conduct, profane
language, resisting an officer, and a few other things, read by a
clerk; and I saw myself across in Blackwell's Island. Oh, I knew the
game. I lost all interest in explanations. I didn't stop to pick up my
precious, unread book. I turned and ran. I was pretty sick, but I
ran. And run I shall, to my dying day, whenever a bull begins to
explain with a club.

Why, years after my tramping days, when I was a student in the
University of California, one night I went to the circus. After the
show and the concert I lingered on to watch the working of the
transportation machinery of a great circus. The circus was leaving
that night. By a bonfire I came upon a bunch of small boys. There were
about twenty of them, and as they talked with one another I learned
that they were going to run away with the circus. Now the circus-men
didn't want to be bothered wit