last, sure enough, all the circus men could do, the horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck, with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t'other one on t'other side, and the people just crazy.  It warn't funny to me, though; I was all of a tremble to see his danger.  But 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 a-going 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 ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he _was_ the sickest ringmaster 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 ringmaster'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. 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