72 Old Days on the Farm 



found in the good old days, and I had located a 

 very thriving colony of wild bees that morning. 

 A large, intelligent and quick-acting fussy bumble- 

 bee resented my intention of robbing its nest and 

 punched a hole in my cheek adjacent to one of my 

 eyes. 



I was a round-faced, rosy-cheeked youngster in 

 those days and you should have seen that cheek 

 of mine an hour after that bumble-bee so effec- 

 tively and emphatically sat down on it. One eye 

 was closed and I was so lop-sided that I leaned 

 over. 



And that was Circus Day. 



But I went just the same as if I had had two 

 good eyes, and I recall that with the one I had 

 I could see that the town youngsters eyed me 

 with broad grins. In my innocence I supposed, of 

 course, that the town folks would all know I'd 

 been stung by a bumble-bee. I didn't know, at 

 that time, just how ignorant townspeople are of 

 what goes on in the country. Those folks all 

 thought, of course, that I'd been fighting. 



As I stood in front of the cage containing His 

 Majesty, the Royal Bengal Tiger, I recall that a 

 circus attendant shouted : 



"Here, you boy with the lop-sided face, back up 

 there or you'll frighten the animals." But he 

 winked at me as he said it and I was sure that he 

 knew how it had happened. 



