For the moment the doctor was mad enough, but he quickly cooled down and determined to play a little trick on them in return. He quit trying to sell goods, and became a buyer. The fields were fairly stocked with turnips and he told every farmer he could meet that he was purchasing agent for the circus, representing that he was out contracting for turnips to feed the elephants. I am afraid to say how many wagon-loads it took daily to supply the needs of the show, but he offered enormous prices for turnips by the wagon-load to be delivered at the show grounds on the day of the circus. We never knew the exact outcome, but many a laugh did we have imagining it. The loads of turnips hauled into town that day must have been a caution, even if not more than half the farmers fulfilled their contracts. Of course, the circus people would not take the vegetables; but I afterwards heard that the manager, seeing a chance for a big local gag and advertisement, kindly took them all into the big tent and seated them together in the reserved corner, where the clown could point them out when he told the great joke of the farmers, the elephants and the turnips. But if those medicine men had showed their faces again in that neighborhood I think the farmers would have killed them, and torn their bodies into fragments as small as turnip seeds. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IX. SIDE LINES AND SCHEMES OF VARIOUS KINDS—THE GLASS PEN—PIE SCHEME CHOKED OFF—SELLING NOTIONS FROM WAGON—FIGHTING THE RAILROAD BONDS—FORCED TO LEAVE TOWN—LEGISLATED OUT OF BUSINESS—A WARNING AND THE ESCAPE—THE ACCIDENT—THE PENNY RAFFLING SCHEME. The doctor was not by any means a lazy man, yet he believed, so long as business was prosperous, in taking his rest and ease for a fair share of the day. If he came in at night, after a good lot of sales on the street, he was ready for bed, unless he fell in with some congenial spirits, with whom he might spend an hour or two, “swapping lies.” With me, it was different. I was on the hustle all the time, from the very moment I got together a little capital to invest in side lines. I was a younger man, you see, and had my fortune all to make, while, from some remarks he occasionally let fall, I was convinced that somewhere the doctor carried a very comfortable bank account and owned a home. I have already spoken of a silver-plating blind. I was in the habit of working this for all it was worth, and I found my principal patrons at the hotels where I stopped. I never overlooked a chance at a hotel, and I believe that, taking into account only the places where we made temporary stops, my profits at such places sometimes overran our bills.