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
Then the attendants set the table and the keeper took me behind the
screen and dressed me, and the old fool forgot to put on my tail. He led
me out and I sat up to the table, hitched up my cuffs, put a napkin
under my chin, took a knife and fork and began to eat, just like a human
being. The audience cheered, and the circus people crowded around and
said I was just as good as Dennis himself. I went through the whole of
Dennis' performance and never skipped a note, until a smart white man
yelled: "Where is the tail of your ourang outang?" and the crowd began
to be suspicious, and more than a thousand yelled. "There is no tail on
your monkey."
That rattled the trainer and he remembered that he had forgotten to pin
the tail on me, so while I was using the finger bowl he went to the
screen and got the tail and came out and was pinning it on to my dress
pants, when the audience began to yell: "Fraud! Fraud! Kill the monk!"
and a lot of stuff.
Then pa got on a barrel the elephants had been performing on and got the
attention of the audience and told them not to be unreasonable. He said
the management had found by experience that after the ourang outang had
been trained to eat like a man and wear men's clothes, that his tail was
in the way, so at a great expense the management had caused Dennis' tail
to be amputated at a New York hospital, and while we always carry the
tail along, it was only used when a critical audience demanded it, but
if this refined audience so desired the tail would be attached to the
intelligent animal.
The crowd yelled: "Pin on the tail; the tail goes with the hide," and
the trainer began to pin it on. Say, I could have killed that trainer.
He run that safety pin about an inch into my spine, and I jumped into
the air about four feet, and I was going to use a cuss word that I
learned in Philadelphia, but I had presence of mind enough to grunt just
as Dennis used to, and chatter like a monkey, and the day was saved. The
tail was on and I turned my back to show that it was on straight, like a
woman's hat, when pa said to hurry the performance to a conclusion,
because he could see that there was a spirit of unrest in the audience,
and he would not be surprised any moment to see Virginia secede and go
out of the union.
There was nothing more for me to do except to drink my cup of
after-dinner coffee, and smoke my cigarette, and quit, and I was patting
myself on the back at my success and squirming around in the chair,
'cause the pin in my tail hurt my back but I never said a word. The
attendant brought in the coffee and I took a couple of swallows, when I
realized that somebody had put cayenne pepper into it, and I was hot
under the collar, but though I was burning up inside, I never peeped,
but just choked and took a swallow of water and vowed to kill the person
that made the coffee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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