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
We had the darndest time getting him away from Newport. Pa couldn't do
any with him, but he took to me, 'cause he thought I was his long-lost
brother, and I could do anything with him. We got him in our stateroom
on the boat, and took his clothes away from him, 'cause he only wears
his clothes when he is being dined and wined, and we chained him in the
upper berth. He just raised the very deuce on the way down to New York.
After pa and I got to sleep that baboon got my clothes, and put them on,
slipped the chain over his head, jumped through the transom, and went
into every berth where the transom was open, and chatted with the people
who occupied the berths. There was an old man and woman from New
Hampshire in one berth, and when the monk got in their berth and began
to talk the Newport language, the old man thought it was me, and he
said: "Now, bub, you go away to your pa."
The monk went out, and got into another berth, and crawled under the
bunk, and when the woman came in to go to bed, she looked under it to
see if any man was there. When she saw our baboon she yelled "fire," and
the officers of the boat pulled him out by the hind leg, and tore my
pant leg off. Pa and I had to sit up the rest of the night with him, and
when we landed him with the show at Madison Square Garden we felt
relieved.
[Illustration: When She Saw the Baboon She Yelled Fire.]
One woman on the boat has followed us ever since to collect damages from
pa, 'cause his oldest son, the monk, proposed to her. Gee, it seems to
me a woman ought to know the difference between a baboon and a man, but
some women will marry anything that wears clothes.
The monk took to me so, Pa said I must teach him everything I could that
men do, so I thought it would do no harm to teach him to chew tobacco,
'cause he could already smoke cigarettes, so I borrowed a chew from the
boss canvasman, a great big chew of black plug tobacco, and the monk
grabbed it, and chewed it awhile, just before the afternoon performance,
and swallowed it. I knew that settled the monk, and when the audience
came along by his cage, and pa was trying to get him to perform, as he
did at Newport, eating dinner like a man, the monk turned pale, and his
stomach ached, and he stood on his head, and held his stomach in both
hands, and kicked the table over. Then he hit pa a swat with his foot,
and wound his tail around pa's neck, and laid his head on pa's shirt
bosom, and was seasick.
Pa said: "Well, this beats everything. What did you do to him?"
I told pa I had only been teaching the monk manly tricks, and pa said:
"Well, you have overdone it." And then the Humane society had pa
arrested for cruelty to animals. But the monk got over it, and now he
tries to be a masher, and winks at women, and flirts with them just as
the men do at Newport.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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