scared the manager thought he better have religious services in the tent
Sunday, so they got a revivalist preacher to preach to them, a fellow
who used to preach to the cowboys out west. Sunday morning the tough
fellows in the show said they wouldn't do a thing to the preacher when
he came on to do his stunt. Their idea was to wait until he got well on
his sermon and then begin to interrupt him and ask questions, and
finally to get a blanket and toss him up a few times for luck, and then
chase him out and have the circus bulldog, that chews the clown's pants,
catch the minister's coat tail and just scare him plum to death.

The boys said it would be the biggest picnic that ever was--a regular
barbecue. The boss canvasman said he was opposed to mixing religion with
the circus business, because the fellows could get all the religion they
needed in the winter, when the show was laid up and he would see the
boys through in anything they proposed to do to the sky pilot that was
going to play his game in ring No. 1 at 10:30 the next day.

Well, after I heard the circus men talk about what they would do to the
preacher, I was afraid they would kill him, so when he and a helper
brought a little melodeon into the ring, facing the reserved seats, I
told him the boys were going to raise a rumpus and drive him out of the
tent with the bulldog hanging to his coat tails. He put his hand on his
pistol pocket and pulled a long, blue gun about half way out, and let it
drop back down beside his leg, and he winked at me and said he guessed
not, scarcely, as he had preached to crowds so tough that a circus gang
was a Sunday school in comparison.

Then I got on a front seat to watch the fun. About 800 of the circus
hands, performers, clowns and peanut butchers, came in, snickering, and
sat down on the reserved seats in front of the little pulpit, improvised