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pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way

and that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood!

and the horse agoing like a house afire too. He just stood up there, a-sailing

around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his life -- and then

he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed them so thick they

kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And then,

there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you

ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly hum --

and finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room,

and everybody just a-howling with pleasure and astonishment.

Then the ring-master he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest

ring-master you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He had

got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. Well, I

felt sheepish enough, to be took in so, but I wouldn't a been in that ring-mas-

ter's place, not for a thousand dollars. I don't know; there may be bullier

circuses than what that one was, but I never struck them yet. Anyways it was

plenty good enough for me; and wherever I run across it, it can have all of my

custom, every time. ssssssssss

Well, that night we had our show; but there warn't only about twelve

people there; just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the time, and

that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over,

but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads

couldn't come up to Shakspeare; what they wanted was low comedy -- and may

be something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could

size their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping-paper and

some black paint, and drawed off some handbills and stuck them up all over the

village. The bills said: ssssssssss

ssssssssss

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