Peck's Bad Boy with the CircusPeck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Circus -- Juvenile fiction
Just then the manager and chief of police came up, and the way they
talked to pa was awful. Pa couldn't explain how it was that he took the
parade out in the country, and you never saw such a time.
By this time the regular drivers had arrived on a special, from where we
left them with a hot box, and they took possession of the teams, and we
got back to the circus lot in time for the afternoon performance. I
don't know what they are doing to pa, but they had him in the manager's
tent all the afternoon with some doctors, who seem to be examining him
for insanity.
Everybody about the show thinks pa has hoodooed the aggregation, but pa
says such things are always happening, and it is wrong to blame him.
The farmer got paid for his corn stalks, and it is to be charged up to
pa.
CHAPTER XI.
The Bad Boy and His Pa in a Railroad Wreck--Pa Rescues the "Other
Freaks"--They Spend the Night on a Meadow--A Near-Sighted Claim
Agent Settles for Damages--Pa Plays Deaf and Dumb and Gets Ten
Thousand.
It has come at last.
Everybody about the show expects that the show has got to have a
railroad wreck every season, and all hands lay awake nights on the cars
to brace themselves for the shock. Sometimes it comes early in the
season, and again a show goes along until almost the end of the season
without a shake-up, and fellows think maybe there is not going to be any
wreck, but the engineers are only waiting till everybody has forgotten
about it, and then, biff, bang, and they have run into another train, or
been run into, and you have to be pulled out of a window by the heels,
and laid out in a marsh until the claim agents can settle with you.
I always thought in reading of railroad accidents, that the railroad
sent out a special trainload of doctors and nurses, to care for the
injured, but the special train never has a doctor until the lawyers give
first aid to the wounded in the way of financial poultices for the
cripples. People in our business are on the railroads, and we work them
for all there is in it; and the man that is hurt the least makes the
biggest howl, and gets the biggest slice of indemnity. Some circus
people spend all their salary as they go along, and live all winter on
the damages they get from the railroads when the wreck comes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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