you.

The first day of the season was great, only all the performers had not
got limbered up. One of the girls on the flying trapeze fell off into
the net from the roof of the tent and broke her suspenders, so when they
got her down in the ring it seemed as though everything she had on was
going to shuck loose, and leave her with nothing but a string of beads,
and pa went up to wrap his coat around her, and she kicked his hat off
and ran into the dressing-room. The audience just yelled, and pa blushed
scarlet, 'cause he saw it was a put-up job to make him ridiculous.

[Illustration: She Kicked Pa's Hat Off.]

During the chariot races pa had to jump like a box car to keep from
being run over by a four-horse chariot driven by a one-horse girl, and
the attendants dragged pa out from under a bunch of horses being ridden
barebacked, like fury. Then two horses hitched together with a strap
were being ridden by a woman, the strap broke and the horses spread
apart, and some one yelled that she had split clear in two. Pa rushed in
to help carry one half of her into the dressing-room, but she wasn't
hurt at all, 'cause the peanut boy told me she was a rubber woman, and
you could stretch her half way across the ring, and she would come
together all right, and eat a hearty meal. Gee, but a circus is a great
place to study human nature.

In the evening performance at Peoria there came up a windstorm which
blew down part of the menagerie tent, where the freaks were, and when
the storm was over, and the tent top was pulled up again, they found pa
all right. He started to crawl under the canvas, and skip out for fear
of the animals, but the fat lady caught him and sat down on him.