WHAT THE SHOWMAN DID NOT TELL.

BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING.

When the showman came to our town, he told the audience a great many things as he passed from cage to cage in his combined circus and menagerie. He told them of the great wangdoodle, two of which were brought from South Africa in three ships, and he told them other stories, which made the very little people open their eyes and mouths wide, but which the intelligent boys and girls only smiled at.

He was a great humbug—there is no doubt about it. But one day I found him alone, and cornered him. Then he told me what he didn't tell to his audiences, and that was much more interesting than a great part of his lecture. When he found that I did not believe in the immense sums which, according to his posters, some of his articles cost, he said:

"But we do pay big prices for good curiosities, and no mistake, though our posters and show-bills do tell some pretty big stories. I once paid twenty-five thousand dollars for a baby hippopotamus, and if I could get another one to-day, I'd pay just as much, or more. A full-grown hippopotamus is pretty expensive too. That one over there cost us four thousand dollars. Elephants, as a rule, are not dear, and you can usually buy a fine specimen for about two thousand dollars. A giraffe costs all the way up from one thousand to five thousand; a tiger or a lion, about five hundred; a zebra, fifteen hundred; and a polar bear, about a thousand dollars. Polar bears," he added, meditatively, "are delicate. 'Why don't you dye him black?' said a fellow in the audience to me once. 'Because,' said I, 'he'll die quick enough.' They do like a good cold snap, with the thermometer away down below zero, the polars do.

"'Is the wild-beast trade a reg'lar business?'" he said, repeating a question of mine. "I should say it was, and more than one large fortune is invested in it. Some of it is done in Hamburg, a good deal in the sea-ports of Holland, some in Falmouth, and some in London. Probably more of it is done in New York than anywhere in Europe. There's a man in Falmouth who boards every ship approaching the English coast off the Lizard, and buys most of the curiosities the sailors have brought with them from the foreign lands in which they have been. But only a very small part of the whole supply comes through sea-captains and sailors. Expeditions go out into Africa and South America to hunt and capture the wild beasts of those continents, and there is one man whose last camp included ninety-two servants, seventy-two camels, twelve mules, twenty-seven horses, and three donkeys.

"This dealer is a Maltese, who, when a boy, used to knock about the docks, and seeing the strange animals on board some of the ships, promised himself that he would make wild-beast-hunting his trade when he became a man. He has lost more than one fortune, and is probably poor now. It's a wonder that he's alive; the business is full of dangers, and there is no certainty of profit in it.

"He usually goes from Alexandria to Suez, and down the Red Sea to Khartoum. The natives expect animal buyers, and nearly always have a stock to sell. 'Buy my little lion,' they will say, 'and I will throw into the bargain a young boy or girl.' The lions are carried in cages slung between two camels, and until the camels have become used to the growling of their burden they give the greatest trouble. Sometimes the natives are not friendly, and between their attacks and the ravages of fever, the expedition loses many of its men.

"The cost of such an expedition is not less than thirty thousand dollars, and while the buyer may double this sum in selling, he may lose all. Leaving Africa with a stock worth one hundred thousand dollars, it is not likely to be worth more than half that when it reaches Malta. The risk is so great that a monkey which can be bought for five cents in Africa is worth twenty dollars in New York, and the increase in the value of large animals is proportionate. You can buy a very good lion in Africa for the price that you would give for a monkey here."

The showman gossiped on in this way for some time, and had begun to be something of a bore, when a little man entered from a side door—to speak properly from one of the canvas folds of the tent, in the middle of which the showman and I were seated before a brazier of glowing coals. He was pale-faced and delicate-looking, but his dress was striking, consisting of a jaunty little velvet jacket, yellow corduroy breeches, and Hessian boots with enamelled leather tops.

"He," said the showman, "is Señor Delmonio, the Emperor of the Jungle, the greatest lion-tamer in the world." I had heard of this celebrity, whose name and portrait appeared in gigantic posters of the show, with the announcement that his services only had been obtained at an outlay of several thousand dollars a week. "Bill," he called out, "here's a gentleman interested in the business."

"What did you call him?" I asked.

"Well, you see," was the answer, "he's a Boston man, and his name is Bill Smith."

Señor Delmonio, or Bill Smith, came toward us and shook hands, and then quietly went to the back of a cage containing a pair of savage and uneasy lions. He was out of sight for a moment, but re-appeared entering the cage from the rear. The lions did not pounce upon him, as I shiveringly feared they would do. They curled themselves against the bars, and uttered low growls, as if they were anxious to avoid him; they sat on their haunches at his command, and leaped through hoops which he had taken into the cage with him; they showed docility, but it was with an unwillingness that made itself known in continuous growls.

This was a rehearsal, and when it was finished, the "Emperor of the Jungle," as quiet as ever, came back to where we were sitting. He seemed low-spirited.

"Yours is dangerous work," I said, not having any liking for those exhibitions in which the peril of the performer is what attracts the audience.

"Yes," he answered, with a sigh, "I suppose it will end badly for me some time; it usually does end badly. You see it's against nature. I know that very well. The beasts don't like it, and sooner or later they take their revenge on poor fellows who, like me, trifle with them. It's the whip alone that keeps them under control. If I dropped my whip while I was in the cage with them, they would fancy that I had lost my power, and they would attack me in a moment. How do I begin in training them? Well, the usual way is to make acquaintance with them from the outside, by doing chores around the cage, and getting them familiar with your face, and above all with your voice. It's pretty ticklish to enter the cage for the first time. I expected to come out bleeding, if not dying. But they behaved well, and I've not been afraid since.

"When they are accustomed to you and you to them," he continued, "the next thing is to teach them tricks, and this takes a good deal of time and a good deal of whipping. The lions are the smartest. You can train a lion to do the ordinary tricks, such as jumping through hoops and over gates, in about five weeks, and a lioness in about six weeks. The leopard is next in intelligence to the lion, and learns almost as readily. A tiger would take eight weeks to learn what the leopard learns in six, and a tigress would take nine weeks for the same work. The hyena is the stupidest, and you can't do anything with him in less than four months. The most difficult thing of all is to teach a wild beast to let you lie on it without eating you. I do this every night with one of the tigresses, but she don't like it one bit; it aggravates her inwardly.

"The great secret of wild-beast taming is to know when to use the whip and when not to use it. But as a matter of fact there is no such thing as really taming a tiger or a lion. A man may have some influence over it, but he is never quite safe with it. No wild beast has ever been actually tamed. A lion will tear you merely out of bad temper occasionally; but a tiger is more vicious, and will attack you from sheer love of blood."

It was now time for the exhibition, and I wished the showman and Señor Delmonio good-day. Some time afterward, when I again met the latter, he had abandoned the foolish business of trifling with the angry passions of wild beasts, and was devoting himself to the more sensible business of training horses.

THE LITTLE PIE-PLANT GATHERER.