She did not seem to assimilate them words I said, yet they was truthful. Her home resembled Mr. Noah’s Houseboat in variety of 4-foot, 2-foot & 1-foot beasts it contained. By actual stastistics Mrs. Barnum possessed the following list of live Pets, which she support from sweethearted reasons of kindness:
1 Dog of waggish ways & barking vocabulary. His name was Julius Siezer, but Neighbours call him “Git Out!” because he dug mines in their flower beds. I forgot his nationality, but his complexion was Irish; 1 Cat entitled Florence who earned her food by purring for it. Her feet was deliciously full of thorns; 1 Parrot called Robt. Burns because his soul was in his talk; 1 cannary-bird name Dick. He didn’t seem to have no resemblance to his name; 2 Goldfish Twins, Harry & Carry who spent their days idly swimming in glass & saying nothing.
Mrs. Barnum formerly had one husband who went dead. I congratulate him.
When all those Pets is going at once, dog-bark, cat-mew, parrot-shriek and cannary-bird warbul, it sound like a brass band composed of dish-pans & steam whistles.
“I love my dum friends,” explan Mrs. Barnum to me with kind-eye expression.
“I love them most when they are most dum,” I repartee, suppressing my ears from those scrambled sounds. “If you could teach those goldy-fishes to sing, the harmonium would be complete.”
While I said thus that dog Siezer approach up and bit me on leg.
“He do this in fun,” say Mrs. Barnum.
“So glad to hear!” I negotiate. “Dogs never hurts so much when they bite humorously.”
“If you wish for to be employed in this home you must be keeper as well as housekeeper,” she tell off. “Promptly at noon o’clock each day the annimals must be fed. Each have his peculiaristic diet, which he crave for health. Siezer must have bone, Florence require cream, Robt. Burns expect apple, Dick ask for seed, while Harry & Carry demand fishfood. I should rather see anything than that my Pets go hungry.”