That would settle it. Shilleto's chest would swell up and that person was his guest for days, introduced as his friend, from Europe, often giving him a title. Shilleto never seemed to get wise to the fact that in every town he would meet with some one who had seen him in Europe and with the same story.
It was on one of the visits to New York that the late J. A. Bailey of Barnum and Bailey, sent me a telegram from Chicago to meet him two days later in New York, and, after mutual greetings, asked me how long it would take me to get to India. I told him I intended to stop two weeks in New York and probably three or four weeks in London. "Now, Mayer," he said, "I want you to get to India as soon as possible. Can you start tomorrow?" Tomorrow being a Saturday, I told him no, and then asked why the hurry. What was there in India that was wanted. He then told me that he had reliable information of a huge elephant, one standing fourteen to fourteen and a half feet high, in Bombay. I laughed, saying, "Mr. Bailey, your informant must be mistaken, there are no elephants in Bombay outside of government elephants, and I am sure none of them equal or come near that size." I assured him that I was fairly posted on the size of elephants in captivity throughout India, and reminded him of my standing order from him to secure if possible any elephant of twelve feet or over.
Now the elephant Jumbo was an African elephant and stood eleven feet two inches, and he was thought to be the tallest elephant in captivity, and when Mr. Bailey told me of an Asiatic elephant fourteen to fourteen and a half feet in height, I could not help smiling. "Mr. Bailey," I said, "why not cable to the American Consul at Bombay and have him secure it for you while your representative is on his way." No, he wanted me to start at once, as he said the Ringling Brothers and several others had heard of it and were sending men out, so he wanted me to beat them to it if possible. Money was no object as long as I was able to secure it, and as he was absolutely in earnest, I told him I could start the following Wednesday, July third. He asked me to see what connections I could make, to secure my passage for the following Wednesday and find out the shortest possible time I could make Bombay.
Can my readers form an idea what an Asiatic elephant fourteen to fourteen and a half feet high, and probably weighing from seven to eight tons, would mean to a circus like the Barnum and Bailey Show? What a drawing power it would be! It would mean a million or more. No keener or more wonderful manager than Mr. Bailey lived, but, like many others, was often misled by wonderful tales of strange things. Immense amounts of money were spent in searching for and trying to secure freaks and abnormal animals that never existed outside the minds of the showmen's informants.
As I said, money was no object. Get it! That was all there was to it. "Go get it!" sounds easy, eh?
After looking up the sailings from London to Bombay, I saw that one of the P. & O. steamers leaving London on the fourth day of July was due in Bombay on the twenty-eighth day of that month, and told Mr. Bailey that if I left New York on the third of July, with luck, I would be in Bombay on the twenty-eighth.
"Can you make it, Mayer? By gosh, that's good time, but how are you going to do it? You have got to go to London first."
I said that was true. I would leave New York on the third and catch the steamer leaving London on the fourth of July at Brindisi, at the tail end of Italy, as it was due there on the fourteenth.
I left New York on the steamer New York on the third, arrived in London on the tenth, stayed two days in London, traveled overland through France, Switzerland and Italy, and on the evening of the fourteenth walked up the gangplank of the P. & O. boat and the twenty-eighth day of July, after transhipping at Aden, stepped ashore in Bombay.
Well, there was no such elephant; nobody had ever heard of any that size, let alone seen one near it, either in Bombay or throughout India, and I went through India looking for it. The largest I ever saw belonged to the Maharajah of Mysore. He was, as nearly as I could judge, about twelve feet, but a bad one and old, always heavily chained, and out of the question for show purposes.