“Sure I have looked,” said the desolated one. “I have looked in all my coat pockets, in all my vest pockets, in my front pants pockets and in one of my hip pockets—and nowheres it ain’t there.” “Why don’t you look in the other hip pocket?” asked Mr. Rabin. “Because,” said the stricken Mr. Moscovitz, “that’s the last pocket I got.” “Vell, vot of it?” “Because, Rabin, if I should look in that pocket and still it ain’t there, then I drop dead.” § 366 SPECIAL EXTRA—To Be Read Only in Leap Year It must be all of thirty-five years now since the thing happened. But the memory of it still abides in my mind, as the finest exhibition of spontaneous humor that ever came within my own experience. I was a small boy in a Kentucky town. John Robinson’s circus paid us its annual visit. For the afternoon performance, my father took me and my younger brother and half a dozen little girls and boys, the children of neighbors, along with him. At the last moment two old ladies joined the party. One of them lived across the street from us and the other just around the corner. Mrs. Slawson, the senior of the pair, was exceedingly deaf. She used one of those old-fashioned, flexible rubber ear-trumpets with a tip at one end and a bell-like aperture at the other. Her crony, Mrs. Ream, had a high-pitched, far-carrying voice. On a blue-painted bench, with the old ladies at one end, my father at the other and the row of youngsters in between, we watched the show. The time came for the crowning feature of a circus of those times. Perhaps the reader is of sufficient age to recall what this was. Elephants and camels and horses would be close-ranked at the foot of a springboard. Along a steep runway, which slanted down to this springboard, would flash in order, one behind another, the full strength of the troupe. The acrobats would tumble over the backs of the animals to alight gracefully upon a thick padded mattress. The clowns would sprawl on the backs of the living obstacles. Always there was one clown who, dashing down the runway, would suddenly halt and fling his peaked cap across. There was another, dressed as a country woman, who, as he somersaulted, lost a pair of bifurcated white garments, while the audience whooped its delight.