Jiminy crinkums, I may be a nut (that’s what the troop calls me anyway), but I’m not a freak and, believe me, when I saw who I was going to have dinner with that day—good night!

They all sat around a big mess board that stood on horses just like at Temple Camp. It was in a side tent. Judge Dot sat right next to me; he was a midget. I guess he was only about three feet high, and he had a special chair. On the other side of me was Lieutenant Lemuel Long; he was the thin man. He was about as fat as a clothes pole. He didn’t eat much, but it wasn’t because he didn’t have any appetite. He said he had a contract with Mr. Costello not to eat much, because that would make him fat. He said he had a contract not to weigh more than eighty pounds. Gee, you’ve got to keep a contract if you make one, that’s one thing.

But anyway, Madame Whopper could eat all she wanted to; she was the fat lady. She was a marvelous mammoth—that’s what it said under the picture. She ate nine pieces of pie. I ate four, but anyway, she was a professional. They kept bringing her more pie. Judge Dot said once she ate eleven pieces. I liked Judge Dot, because he said he was sorry about Marshal Foch. He gave me his picture with his name on. He said if it was anyone else but me, it would cost a quarter.

But anyway, the one I liked best was Jib Jab, is he human? He had fur just like a bear, but a head like a man, only his face was brown and it had long hair on it. His face didn’t look exactly like a man and it didn’t look exactly like animal. First I was kind of scared, because in the pictures he was in a cage and he was grabbing hold of the bars and glaring awful fierce and wild. And, gee whiz, I didn’t want to eat dinner with a wild animal. Oh boy, didn’t I have a good scare when I saw him coming to the table!

He jumped over the board seat and sat down right opposite me and took the fur right off his head, just as if he was scalping himself and laid it on the ground. He looked more like a man then.

He looked across and said to me, “Hello, old top, how are they treating you?”

I said, “I’m feeling pretty well.”

“Going into the parade, I hear,” he said. “That was quite a stunt you pulled. You’d never catch me like that if I once broke loose. Think you could?”

I said, “Maybe I couldn’t, but anyway, I guess you’re human, all right.”

Then he began to laugh and said to the thin man, “How goes it, Skinny; you going to ride?”

I guess he meant the parade. The fat woman said, “I wouldn’ do no ridin’ fer no proprietor, not me. The public has got to come to me; I wouldn’ never go to them.”

Jib Jab said, “All in the game.”

Judge Dot said, “It’s different with you, Jib; you ain’t human and you can’t say for yourself. You’re in the menagerie class. You got to ride in your cage. You ain’t a regular freak. I never heard of no parade work in a freak contract.”

Madame Whopper said, “I wouldn’ do parade work fer no proprietor, ride or walk, I wouldn’ not even Barnum hisself, I wouldn’.”

Jib Jab said for me to pass him the butter and then he winked at me and he said, “You’re too particular, Ma. Parade work is all right. I like parade work, except I can’t smoke. How about it, Kid?”

I said I didn’t mind being in a parade, but I wouldn’t want to ride in a cage like he had to do.

He laughed and said it was all in the game. He said if he ever broke out of that cage, I’d never capture him until he came back for his money on Saturday night.

I said “Sometimes boy scouts find people; sometimes they hunt for people that are lost. In our magazine there’s always a notice if a scout is lost and all the scouts are on the look out for him.”

“Yes, but those people are human,” he said.

I said, “Gee whiz, I can’t deny that.”

“You never hunted for a what-is-it, did you?” he asked, awful funny like.

I told him, “No, I never did, but once a troop of scouts found a girl that was lost on a mountain, and there was another troop that found a fellow just from seeing his name in the newspapers.”

He said, “You’re a wide awake bunch, you kids. They don’t have any boy scouts in the jungle where I was captured alive. If you ever get on my trail, I’d give you a run all right.”

I asked him where that jungle was where he was captured alive, and he said it was on Washington Avenue in the Bronx.

He was an awful nice fellow.