May 14.--This has been a week that would kill anybody, and pa and I talk of resigning, though pa feels as though he didn't want to break up the show by going away right in the middle of the harvesting of shekels from the country men, and I don't know what would happen if pa and I should both be taken sick at the same time.

The boss of the menagerie got a new animal by express from Colorado when we were leaving Akron, O., and we got it in one end of a cage occupied by a happy family of rabbits, coons, a spotted leopard and a hound dog and a house cat. The new animal was a bob cat, such as Roosevelt shoots when the man has the camera ready to catch him in the act. Say, but that bob cat is a terror, and crosser than any animal we got, except the hyenas. The bob cat just walked around and snarled and spit at the happy family through the bars, and kept them awake all night on the road, and the happy family held a sort of convention and I could see by the way they all looked at me that they were passing resolutions inviting me to break up the bob cat business. The manager of the menagerie told pa he wished the confounded bob cat would escape, 'cause he was a blooming nuisance, so I thought I would help get rid of the beast, and save the show from disgrace. So when we got to Oberlin I thought that was a pious community that could stand a wild bob cat, so I put several sheets of sticky tanglefoot fly paper in the bob cat's cage and opened the door of the cage, after the crowd had gone into the main tent to the big show, and the menagerie tent was empty except the keepers. They were all asleep under the wagons, and the animals had all curled down for a nap, and the freaks were on their platform lolling around, waiting for the main show to be out so they could do their stunts over again.

The bob cat got all his four feet in the tanglefoot fly paper, then he grabbed a sheet in his mouth and rolled over in a few more sheets, and when he was entirely harmless and you couldn't tell what he was, I opened the door of the cage and he went out like a rocket, and rolled over a few times in the sawdust, and then jumped on the platform with the freaks, run over the fat woman, who was laying back in a Morris chair, and left one of the sheets of fly paper on her low neck, and it stuck like a porous plaster. She yelled that she had been stabbed, and pa came along just as the bob cat jumped off the platform, and struck pa on the back, and the cat spit at pa, and pa fell over among the sacred cattle and rolled under a cow and got on his knees, when the animals all began to roar, and pa crawled behind a bale of hay, and a zebra stepped on pa's face, and pa yelled "Hey, Rube," which is a grand hailing sign of distress when circus men want to fight, and about a hundred of the canvasmen came running with tent stakes to hit people with.

Pa crawled out from the bale of hay, which he had pulled over him, and the hay stuck to the fly paper on pa, and a camel began to eat the hay, and he chewed pa's shirt until the hands pulled pa away.

The bob cat escaped into the main tent, just as the Japanese jugglers were juggling in No. 1 ring, and the elephants were standing on their heads in No. 2 ring, and the flying trapeze artists were jumping from one trapeze to another, and the bob cat rushed through the Japanese, and amongst the elephants, with the fly paper all over him, and the audience fairly yelled, 'cause they thought it was a clown dressed up to do some stunt, but the Japanese left the ring in a panic, while the elephants got down off their heads and stood on their hind feet and cried like children.

The audience saw that something had happened that was serious and they all rose to their feet and were going off into a panic when pa and a few brave men came and drove the bob cat up a centerpole, away up above the torches, and made speeches to the audience, and quieted them down, and the performance went on. But pa was a sight, and the head circus man told pa he would have to dress better, or forever after hold his peace, and pa said if any man could be more patient than he was, with a bob cat on his neck, a sacred cow walking on him, and a camel trying to eat his whiskers and shirt, they better hire that man.

But it was all fixed up and everybody apologized to everybody, and the bob cat went on up the center pole and out on top of the canvas and escaped into Ohio, where it will probably be holding office before next fall.

Gee, but the giant is a coward. When the bob cat began to run up the giant's leg, and then up his back, and then jumped from his shoulder onto the fat lady, the giant turned pale and cried, and the midget said to him: "O, you big stiff, why didn't you have sand enough to hold the kitty till the keeper came? I've a good mind to get on a stepladder and kick you," and the cowardly giant cried again, and said if the midget ever struck him he would report him to the management. Just then pa came along and asked what the row was about, and when pa found that the midget was trying to pick a quarrel with the giant, he took the midget across his knee and gave him a few spanks, and told him to quit bullying the freaks. The midget got up on a barrel and called his son, who is bigger than pa, when I stepped in between them and told the midget's son if he struck my father I would have his heart's blood, and he quailed, and then I bullied the giant, who is a coward, and now they are all afraid of me.

I don't see how a big fellow like a giant can be afraid of things smaller than he is, and shy when a dog barks, and be afraid some one is going to smash him in the jaw, but pa says the size of a man don't make any difference, 'cause it is the heart that does the business. A man may be big enough and strong enough to tip over a box car, loaded with pig iron, but if his heart is one of these little ones intended for a miser, with no pepper sauce running from the heart to the arteries and things, and a liver that is white, and nerves that are trembly, and no gall to speak of, why a big man is liable to be walked all over by a nervy little man who is spunky, and gets mad and froths at the mouth.

I have been having great times with the monkeys, and I guess the manager will make me superintendent of monkeys, 'cause they all seem to be stuck on me, and will do anything I tell them to. Pa says they think I am some new kind of a monkey, and they look up to me. I lead out the big monkeys that ride the goats and dogs, and have a horse race in the ring, and fasten them on the little animals, and when they ride around the ring on the dogs and goats and ponies, they keep looking at me as though they wanted my approval.

There is one little monkey that sleeps nearly all the time, and I played a trick on pa with it that like to got me arrested and licked by a man who was mad. A man and woman with a baby in a little wagon were going through the menagerie, and it was crowded, and they left the baby and wagon in pa's charge, near the monkey cage, while they went to see the hippopotamus. Pa is the most accommodating man about holding babies that ever was. The baby was asleep when its folks left it in the wagon with pa, but it woke up while they were gone, and pa took it out of the baby wagon and carried it around just as he would at home, and showed it the animals, and held it up on his shoulder, and I took the little monkey and put it in the baby wagon, and it went to sleep, and I put a veil over it, and was standing by the wagon talking with a peanut butcher, when the parents of the baby came back, and the woman raised up the veil to see if the child was asleep, when the monkey woke up and put its hairy hands up to rub it eyes. The monkey looked up at the woman with beady eyes and began to chatter, and she yelled and her husband took a look at the monk, and he was mad. They could both see it was a monkey instead of a baby, and they asked where the old man with the chin whiskers was that they left the baby with, and the peanut butcher said: "What, that old guy with the checkered vest? Why, he has gone with the baby over to the lion cage, where they are feeding the lions. Don't you see him holding the baby upon his shoulder?" By ginger, I never saw two people sprint the way they did, 'cause I guess they thought pa was sure crazy, and would give the baby to the lions. But I told them the old man was all right, and would bring the baby back, and if he didn't they could have the monkey, 'cause I didn't want them to think they were going to be losers while attending our show. Then I chucked the monkey under the chin and said: "Maybe this is your baby, 'cause they change wonderfully when they get into a show."

Well, I just had time to put the monkey back in the cage when I saw that couple surround pa, and the woman grabbed the baby out of his arms, and the man tackled pa around the legs below the knee, and threw pa down under the ostrich cage, and said: "You kidnaper! I am a good mind to choke the life out of you," and he squeezed pa's windpipe until pa's tongue run out, when a canvasman came along and hit the man in the ear, and he laid down near a zebra, and the zebra kicked at the man and hit pa, 'cause a zebra is crosseyed and kicks like a woman throws a stone, and no man knows where it listeth.

Pa got up to murder the man that choked him, when the ostrich reached its head out between the bars of the cage and picked pa's big diamond stud off his shirt, big as a piece of rock candy, and swallowed it, and pa said that's the limit, and he called the manager and asked him how he was going to get his diamond stud out of the ostrich. The manager told pa to go to the dressing-room and ask the woman who has charge of the wardrobe for the ostrich stomach pump, and when he got the stomach pump the manager said the ostrich would cough up the diamond stud. Pa went off to the dressing-room to get the ostrich stomach pump, and I knew there was going to be trouble, 'cause I thought the manager was just stringing pa.

Well, he went up to the woman in the dressing-room, and said he came after her stomach pump, ostrich size, and you'd a died to see the ruction. The woman looked at pa as though he had escaped from a sanitarium, and then she seemed to think he was trying to make game of her, and she said: "You old skate, do you know who you have the honor of addressing? I am the queen of this realm, and they all kow-tow to me; now you come and take your medicine," and before pa could say boo she had pulled a big clothes bag over his head and tied it around his feet, and said: "Come on, girls, we are going to have roasted missionary," and they were lighting a gasoline torch to roast pa, when the owner of the show came along and asked what was up. When the wardrobe woman told him pa had insulted her, the owner gave her $10 to buy champagne for the performers, and she released pa, and he went back to choke his diamond out of the ostrich.

Pa says this life is more exciting, if anything, than staying at home, and it will either kill him or cure him of a desire to be a Barnum in about a month more.