Wall, we stayed here a good while, and Josiah thought he'd eat sunthin'
here, too. If he'd had his way, he would had a good square meal in every
foreign country, and native one, too. That man's appetite is wonderful.
Foreign countries can't quell it down, nor rumatiz, nor nothin'.
Hakenbeck's animal show comes next, and it is the most complete--so they
say--that wuz ever exhibited.
The tent is two hundred feet square, and is filled with all the animals
that ever went into the Ark, and more, too, I believe. Five thousand
people can go in here at one time, and set down, and see lions a-ridin'
on horseback, with a woman to run the performance, and see animals
a-doin' everything else that ever wuz done by 'em, and tigers, and
elephants, and performin' horses, and two hundred monkeys, and one
thousand parrots.
We didn't go in, but Josiah slipped in one day when I wuzn't with him,
and he described it to me. He owned up to me that he had.
And he said he did it to keep me from havin' sech a skair.
"Why," sez he, "a woman that is afraid of a gobbler, and runs from a
snake--
"Why," sez he, "I wouldn't as a man of feelin' take her right in the way
of havin' her feelin's hurt and skairin' her most to death for nothin'
this world could give."
And I said--and I meant it--"If it hadn't been for the fifty cents I
guess you wouldn't felt so, Josiah Allen."
But he stuck to it that it wuz pure affection and principle. I d'no what
to think about it, but I have my suspicions.
Wall, at the next place Josiah could not be restrained. It wuz the good
old-fashioned New England house with gable ends, and here a good New
England dinner wuz served.
And sez Josiah, "I don't leave this house till I have a good square
meal."
Bizer felt jest so, and so Selinda and I jined 'em in a meal most as
good as she and I got up to hum, and that is sayin' a great deal.
Josiah's satisfaction in eatin' that pork and beans, and them doughnuts,
wuz a sight to witness.
Bizer called for cold biled vittles, and sure enough, they brung 'em on.
And the enjoyment of them two men wuz extreme. Selinda and I took
comfort in some old-fashioned pound-cake and custard pie.
Selinda said she'd love to have the receipt of that pound-cake.
Selinda is a good plain cook. She can't cook like me, of course, but she
duz well.
Wall, their extra good meal had sot up Josiah and Bizer to a wonderful
extent (they had drunk coffee too strong for 'em by half, and I knew
it), and them two men wanted to go back into the Cairo Street. Bizer and
Selinda had never seen it, and all the way there Josiah seemed to be on
the lookout to do sunthin' heroic and surprisin' to Bizer.
And jest after we got there, we did see as strange a sight as I ever
see. It wuz a Eastern Fakir, as they called him. He wuz performin' one
of his strange sights right there before our face and eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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