on playing tricks on him while we were on the road, and he said he had
got so used to my tricks that he couldn't live without them, and he
didn't want me to let a chance escape to make him have a good time.

April 11.--Ma and pa have had several discussions about what kind of a
position it is going to leave her in, among the neighbors, for pa and I
to go off with a circus, and ma wanted to withdraw from the church, and
board up the windows of the house, and make folks think we had gone to
the seashore, but pa convinced her that we would have preaching in the
main tent every Sunday and he says there is no more pious lot of people
on earth than those who travel with a circus, and then ma wanted to go
along. She said she could do the mending of the long socks that the
women wear when they ride barebacked, but we had to shut down on ma's
going with the show, cause we never could have any fun with a woman to
look after. Pa says nowadays the men and women who ride on bareback
horses in the ring dress in regular evening costume, the women with
low-necked dresses and long trains, and the men with swallow-tail coats
and patent leather shoes, and they are as polite as dancing masters.

We have compromised with ma, and she is to meet the show at Kalamazoo
and go with us to Kankakee and Keokuk until she is overcome by nervous
prostration, when we shall have her go home. Pa thinks ma would last
about two days with the show, but I guess if she took a course of
treatment with peanuts and red lemonade one afternoon and evening, she
would want to throw up her job, and go back home in charge of a stomach
specialist.

Well, pa showed up at the house in his circus clothes this afternoon,
and he certainly is a peach. Pa has been letting his chin whiskers grow
for about six weeks, and today he had them colored black, and he looks