Then he began to laugh and said to the thin man, “How goes it, Skinny; you going to ride?”
I guess he meant the parade. The fat woman said, “I wouldn’ do no ridin’ fer no proprietor, not me. The public has got to come to me; I wouldn’ never go to them.”
Jib Jab said, “All in the game.”
Judge Dot said, “It’s different with you, Jib; you ain’t human and you can’t say for yourself. You’re in the menagerie class. You got to ride in your cage. You ain’t a regular freak. I never heard of no parade work in a freak contract.”
Madame Whopper said, “I wouldn’ do parade work fer no proprietor, ride or walk, I wouldn’ not even Barnum hisself, I wouldn’.”
Jib Jab said for me to pass him the butter and then he winked at me and he said, “You’re too particular, Ma. Parade work is all right. I like parade work, except I can’t smoke. How about it, Kid?”
I said I didn’t mind being in a parade, but I wouldn’t want to ride in a cage like he had to do.
He laughed and said it was all in the game. He said if he ever broke out of that cage, I’d never capture him until he came back for his money on Saturday night.
I said “Sometimes boy scouts find people; sometimes they hunt for people that are lost. In our magazine there’s always a notice if a scout is lost and all the scouts are on the look out for him.”
“Yes, but those people are human,” he said.