3:30 p.m.
Why , this herd of elephants would walk on mice , and rats , too . You bet with him and tell him to bring along all the rats and mice he can find in the white house , and you can turn them into the ring Monday afternoon when the elephants do their turn , and if an elephant bats an eye I will eat his ears for mushrooms . '' I went back to young Mr. Senator and took his bet , and told him I had plenty more money to bet the same way , and he said the next afternoon he would come with his mice and rats , and a lot of money to bet that you could n't hold that flock of elephants with log chains when he opened his bag of rats and mice . Well , how it got into the papers I do not know , but the next morning they all said an interesting experiment would be made the next afternoon at the great and only circus , to determine once and for all whether elephants were afraid of mice , and that a senator 's son and a son of one of the proprietors of the show would conduct the experiment by turning loose a lot of mice and rats in the rings at precisely 3:30 p.m. Well , you never saw such a crowd in a circus as we had that afternoon . It seemed as though the whole population turned out , foreign ministers , negroes , society people and clerks . That senator 's son and the whole family , and the neighbors , must have been up all night catching mice and rats , and it took nine boys and three servants to carry the baskets and traps and bags of mice and rats . I passed them all in and we lined up on a front seat to wait for the elephant stunt , and when the thing was ripe we were to empty the whole mess of vermin into the ring .