" Here
was the ring; here the tent-pole holes, and here a scrap of paper
torn from a hoop the bareback rider leaped through . . . . Oh, now
I know what I was going to tell you that the clown said. The
comicalest thing!
He picked up one of these hoops and began to sniffle.
So the ring-master asked him what he was crying about.
"I - I -was thinking of my mother. Smf! My good old mother!"
So the ring-master asked him what made him think of his mother.
"This." And he held up the paper-covered hoop.
The ring-master couldn't see how that put the clown in mind of his
mother. He was awful dumb, that man.
"It looks just like the pancakes she used to make for us."
Well, sir, we just hollered and laughed at that. And after we had
quieted down a little, the ringmaster says: "As big as that?"
"Bigger," says the clown. "Why, she used to make 'em so big we
used 'em for bedclothes."
"Indeed" (Just like that. He took it all in, just as if it was so.)
"Oh, my, yes! I mind one time I was sleeping with my little
brother, and I waked up just as cold - Brr! But I was cold!"
"But how could that be, sir? You just now said you had pancakes
for bedclothes."
"Yes, but my little brother got hungry in the night, and et up all
the cover."
Laugh? Why, they screamed.
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