hant holding an
American flag with his trunk, and waving it, and the audience broke out
into a cheer that fairly ripped the canvas.

Then I said to young Mr. Senator: "Come on with your rats, now, and I
win $50." All hands picked up the baskets and bags and went to the side
of the ring and emptied the whole bunch of more than 500 into the ring.
The rats and mice rushed for the elephants, and then turned and made a
rush for the reserved seats.

Oh, dear, what a time we had. The elephants got down off that pyramid so
quick it would make your head swim, and old Bolivar trumpeted in abject
fear, and tried to break away, but pa came along with a tent stake and
hit Bolivar over the head, and told the trainer to put the elephants
back into the pyramid and hold them there till the bell rung for them to
cease their stunt. The trainer couldn't do anything with them, and they
bellowed and dodged mice and shied at rats, and Bolivar took his trunk
and swatted pa clear across the ring.

[Illustration: Bolivar Swatted Pa Clear Across the Ring.]

The elephants followed Bolivar to the main entrance, each elephant
trying to walk on the heels of the one ahead of him, and all the circus
hands trying to head off the elephants, but they wouldn't head off. They
were simply scared to death, and they broke out the side of the tent
near the lemonade stand and went whooping out into the open air and
freedom, while the audience yelled with joy.

Young Mr. Senator said to me: "What do you think of elephants now?"

I told him to take his money and he darned.

The audience was getting nervous, so the band struck up "A Hot Time in
the Old Town," and they were quieting down as the curtain raised and the
horses for the chariot race came out. Just then a woman with red socks
got up on her chair in the press seats and pulled her dress away up and
yelled, "Rats!" and another woman screamed and jumped up on a seat with
her clothes at half mast, and yelled that there were mice on the seats.
In less than two minutes every woman in the audience, and the bearded
woman, and the fat woman, were standing up on something, holding up
their dresses and shaking their skirts and screaming, and when the fat
woman fell into the arms of the bearded woman, in a faint, and the
bearded woman dropped the fat woman, pa told the bearded woman he was
ashamed of her screaming, 'cause she ought to be more of a man than
that.

Well, every mouse and rat in the bunch seemed