as though he had swallowed the blacking brush, and left the bunch of
bristles outside, on his chin. He looks fierce. Then, he has got a new
brand of silk hat, with a wide, curling brim, and he has had a vest made
of black and blue check goods, the checks as big as the checks on a
checker board, and a pair of pants that look like a diamond-back
rattlesnake, and he has got an imitation diamond stud in his white shirt
that looks like a paper weight.

Ma wanted to know if there was any law to compel pa to dress like that,
'cause he looked as though he was a gambler or a train robber. Pa says
that a circus proprietor has got to look different from anybody else, in
order to inspire fear and respect on the part of the hands around the
show, as well as the audiences that flock to the arena, and he asked ma
if she didn't remember old Dan Rice, and old John Robinson. Ma didn't
remember them, but she remembered Barnum, because Barnum lectured on
temperance, and she said she hoped pa would emulate Barnum's example,
and pa said he would, and then he took a watch chain with links as big
as a trace chain and spread it across his checkered vest, from one
pocket to the other, with a life-size gold elk hanging down the middle,
and ma almost had a convulsion.

Gee, but if pa wears that rig in the menagerie tent the animals will paw
and bellow like a drove of cattle that smell blood. Pa is going to wear
a sack coat with his outfit, so as to look tough, and he wouldn't hear
to ma when she tried to get him to wear a frock coat. He said a frock
coat was all right in society or among the crowned heads, but when you
have to mingle with lions and elephants one minute that would snatch the
tail off a coat and chew it and the next minute you are mixed up with a
bunch of freaks or a lot of bareback riders or trapeze performers, you
have got to compromise on a coat that will fit any climate, and not