“Dear me!” said the widow. “How unfortunate to lose such a father. How old was he when he passed away?”
“He was only fifty-nine,” I answered, with criminal carelessness.
Immediately, if not sooner than that, I perceived that it was time for me to be wending my way onward, and I proceeded to wend, overloading her with such a burden of gratitude that she didn’t have time to get her breath before I was half a mile down the road.
Near noon I approached the hoop skirts of a large city. As I approached, I perceived posted on fences and the sides of old barns many carnivorous posters advertising a circus which was to appear in that town on that very date.
Entering the town, I lemonaded slowly down the principal street. Ere long my ears were saluted by a sound resembling a base libel on music, and soon the circus band at the head of a long procession made its appearance.
Both sides of the street were lined with gaping multitudes. It seemed that everybody in town and for miles around had assembled to witness that parade. Lawyers, doctors, storekeepers, clerks, stenographers, street laborers, everybody, in fact, had gathered upon the sidewalks to see the procession pass, and for the time being business in that town was placed horse de tomcat.
The music assassinators of the band were dressed in bright-red suits, and rode in a gilded chariot. Next in line, a short distance behind the band chariot, came the biggest elephant I have ever seen; certainly the creature must have weighed twelve or fourteen tons, more or less.
In the center of the city there was a wooden bridge spanning a deep, dark river. Unfortunately, this bridge was not of sufficient strength to sustain the weight of that huge elephant. Just as the monster reached the middle span of the structure there was a sudden cracking of timbers, and the bridge gave way, precipitating the immense creature into the water.
The excitement immediately became intense. Women shrieked, men shouted, and, to the relief of everybody, the circus band stopped firing. The splash of the elephant striking the surface of the river resembled a clap of thunder, and water was flung over the top of a five-story building near at hand.