for the next mess of performers, and the ones who have just been in go
and lie down on straw and wonder if they can hit the treasurer for an
advance on their salaries, so they can go to a beer garden and forget it
all.

An average audience never gets its money's worth unless some one is hurt
doing some daring act. Pa suggested that they have some one pretend to
be hurt in every act, and have them picked up and carried out on
stretchers with doctors wearing red crosses on their arms in attendance,
giving medicine and restoratives. The show tried it at Bucyrus, O., and
had seven men and two women injured so they had to be carried out, and
the audience went wild, and almost mobbed the dressing-room, to see the
doctor operate on the injured. It was such a great success that next
week we are going to put in an automobile ambulance and have an
operating table in the dressing-room with a gauze screen so the
audiences can see us cut off legs like they do in a hospital. Maybe we
shall put in a dissecting room if the people seem to demand it.



CHAPTER VI.


The Bad Boy Puts Fly-Paper in the Bob Cat's Cage--The Bob Cat Causes
a Panic in the Main Tent--The Midget Quarrels with the Giant--Pa is
Almost Arrested for Kidnaping and the Ostrich Swallows His Diamond
Stud.


May 14.--This has been a week that would kill anybody, and pa and I talk