Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/214

Rh down Main Street and crawling under Si Hooper's store at the far end of it—an imitation, he told us, to which the Sultan was powerful partial, "him being a cruel man and delighting in torturing the poor dumb beasts which the Lord has given us to love, honor and cherish."

He kept this sort of thing up till he judged it was our bedtime, and then he thanked us "one and all for our kind attention," and said that as his mission in life was to amuse as well as to heal, he would stay over till the next afternoon and give a special matinée for the little ones, whom he loved for the sake of his own golden-haired Willie, back there over the Rhine.

Naturally, all the women and children turned out the next afternoon, though the men had to be at work in the fields and the stores, and the Doctor just made us roar for half an hour. Then, while he was singing an uncommon funny song, Mrs. Brown's Johnny let out a howl.