Part I Chapter 6 Doctor Dolittle's Garden by Hugh Lofting
THE ACROBAT
"That day I had very bad luck in the matter of food. I hardly got anything to eat all day. By the evening I was positively ravenous. I came to a town. Hoping to pick up bones or scraps that other dogs had left, I searched several back yards. But all I got was two or three fights with wretched inhospitable curs who objected to my coming into their premises.
"Then, famished and very bored with life, I wandered through the streets. At a corner I came upon an acrobat performing. He was standing on his hands and doing somersaults and things like that. He was all alone. There was a hat laid on the curb-stone in front of him, and from time to time people threw coppers into it.
"This set me thinking. The man was evidently making his living this way. In my life with the Gipsies I had often seen dog-acts in the circus ring. Some of the tricks I had practised myself when I had had a notion to go in for a circus career, and I had become skilled in quite a few of them. I could stand on my front paws, beg with a lump of sugar on my nose, throw a back somersault and so forth. Very well then, I said to myself, why shouldn't I give a one-dog show on the streets of this town the same as the man was doing? But I needed a hat for the people to throw money into—only in my case I hoped they would throw cutlets and sausages instead. Yes, the first thing to do was to get a hat.
"I knew that hats were to be found in shops and on garbage-heaps. I set off and hunted round the backs of houses. The garbage-heaps of this town had everything on them but hats. Most annoying. Where could I find one? I must have a hat. I passed a hat shop. The shop-keeper was busy writing in a book. There were lots of hats on the counter and many more, in boxes, on the floor. I was desperate. He could easily spare me one—he had so many. I dashed in and tried my luck. Bother it! I couldn't get the hat out of the box quick enough. The shop-keeper threw his book at me and chased me out.
"I went on down the street.
"'Never mind,' I said to myself. 'I'll get a hat, somehow, yet.'
"As I turned the corner into another street I saw an old gentleman crossing the road. He was all muffled up and full of dignity. And on his head he had an elegant high hat—just the kind of hat I wanted for my performance.
"'Ah!' I said to myself. 'If I can only trip that old gentleman up, his hat will roll off and I can take it to another part of the town and begin my show.'
"No sooner said than done. I leapt out into the road and ran between his feet. He stumbled and came down with a grunt on his stomach. His hat rolled into the gutter. I grabbed it and shot off down the street. Before the old gentleman had time to pick himself up I was round the corner and out of sight.
"I didn't stop running till I got to an entirely different part of the town, quite a distance away. Here I felt I was safe from pursuit. I found myself at a busy street corner.
"'Now,' I thought, 'the next thing is to collect a crowd.'
"I set the top hat on the curb-stone, got inside it and started barking for all I was worth. Very soon passers-by began to stop and wonder what it was all about. I went on yelping—I was sorry I hadn't a drum, that's what I should have had. Then I got out of the high hat, bowed to the audience and began my show. I begged, stood on my front paws, threw somersaults, etc. It was quite as good a show as the acrobat had given—better in fact.
"The audience didn't know quite what to make of it. They gaped and gaped. Then they began asking one another, 'Where's his master? ... Who's he with?'
"The silly people couldn't believe I was my own master, giving my own show. After a little they came to the conclusion it was some new trick, that my master had hidden himself somewhere near and was just proving how wonderfully I had been trained by not appearing on the scene himself till after the performance was over. Then pennies began dropping into the hat. That was all very well, but I couldn't eat pennies.
"However the crowd finally did realize that I was entirely on my own. And some old ladies in the audience, instead of giving me coins, took their money into a butcher's shop near by and bought some meat to give me. This I gobbled up with great relish and they went and got some more. The crowd grew bigger and bigger meanwhile. And pretty soon, eating between somersaults, I was as full as an egg and I couldn't have done another trick if you had given me a kingdom.
"Well, my act earned me a very square meal, but it also nearly cost me my liberty. Why is it that people just can't seem to understand that a dog may be satisfied to be his own boss? Before my show had gone very far many well-meaning people among the audience decided they ought to adopt me.
"'Such a clever little dog!' cried one old lady. 'I think I'll take him home with me—that is, if no one really owns him. Did you see the way he ate those sausages I gave him? He must be starving. He ought to have a good home, such a clever dog.'
"At that I made up my mind to close my act in a hurry. But it wasn't at all easy to get away, I found. By this time I had attracted such a crowd at the corner that the traffic was held up. People were jammed in around me like a solid wall. Several persons in the audience began to argue as to which of them should adopt me. I should have been flattered no doubt but I wasn't. I looked around frantically for a means of escape.
"Then suddenly the old gentleman whose hat I had stolen came up on the outskirts of the throng and recognized his topper, filled with pieces of meat and calves' liver, sitting on the curb-stone. Furious with rage he began milling his way in through the mob. While he was picking up his hat and emptying the meat out of it—I hadn't been able to eat more than half of the crowd's contributions—I scuttled out through the lane he had made coming in. The people's attention was suddenly turned to his lamentations and the story of how I had stolen his hat. And while they were listening I got through into more open country in the middle of the street.
"But the crowd was not long in missing me.
"'Stop him! Grab him! He's getting away!'some one called.
"And then as I bolted round the corner I realized that I had the whole town chasing me.
"I had eaten so many sausages and veal kidneys and pork chops that running at all was no easy matter. However I saw plainly that if I was going to keep my treasured liberty I had got to put my best foot forward.
"Luckily it was quite dark now. And as soon as I got off the main thoroughfares, away from the shops and into the dimly lit back streets I soon gave the crowd the slip.
"Ten minutes later, when I slowed down on the open road again outside the town, I said to myself—
"'Well, I earned my own living to-night all right. But next time I do it I'll try some other way.'"