Black Bruin: The Biography of a Bear

by Clarence Hawkes

In a very few minutes, however, the crate, together with the other freight, was hustled into an empty car, and the train pulled out and went thundering away into the darkness.

At first the motion made Black Bruin very uneasy, and he walked to and fro continually; but finally this was succeeded by his being car-sick, and he was soon glad to lie down and keep very still for the rest of the journey.

This was his first night upon a freight train, but it was not his last, for ahead of him was a strange and turbulent existence. He was going to the great city to join the circus, to be a part of that astonishing procession which annually parades the streets of our large cities, and which draws crowds, such as does no other entertainment.

Toward morning, after having made several stops, the car in which Black Bruin was a passenger was side-tracked, and a large, gilded wagon, known to the small boy as a circus-van, was backed up to it. Then the crate was placed against the cage on the van, and both doors were opened.

The new prison looked much more fragile than that in which Black Bruin was. The bars were very small and might be easily broken. It was lighter, too, than his present abode, so after a little poking and punching, the captive went into the other prison, and a moment later, when he turned about to look for the doorway by which he had entered, it was closed and the wooden crate was being taken away. Man had again outwitted him, but the manner in which he was now confined seemed very insecure to Black Bruin. He would soon either find a way out, or else make one. With this in view, he went about the cage several times, sniffing and poking his nose between the bars. He put his powerful arms between two of the bars and strained upon them with all his enormous strength, but they did not seem to give at all. Then he sought to grind one to splinters between his teeth, but instead he broke a tooth, and the effort made him see stars.

What new and amazing substance was this, which could not be bent or broken, or even bitten into? The more Black Bruin pushed at the iron bars of his cage, the fainter grew that spark of hope which is the mainspring of all life, until at last he ceased to hope altogether, and bowing to the inevitable, no longer sought to be free. Sullenly he glared at the gaping crowds that passed his cage daily, and the only thing to which he looked forward was his food. This he received each day at about noon.

What it all meant, he could not imagine. The great crowds, the blare of bands, the gala dress and the babel of voices all reminded him of the country fairs that he had often attended with Pedro, in the old dancing-bear days.

The long journeys by rail he soon got used to, so that he was no longer sick, but it was a weary existence. The snap and rattle of car-wheels was continually in his ears, and if it was not that, it was the rattle and the rumble of heavy wheels over paving-stones, the noise of the brazen-throated circus-band, or the high and insistent calliope. Noise, noise, noise everywhere.

When the animals were fed, there was the roaring of the lions, the snapping and snarling of wolves, jaguars, pumas, and the hideous laugh of the hyena; the chattering of the monkeys, and the piping and croaking of strange, tropical birds. And, more insistent than any of these, the bellowing of the sacred cattle from India, and the belling and bleating of strange deer, not to mention the cavernous trumpeting of elephants when their keepers prodded them into obedience.

There is but one law in the circus, and that is the law of fear. All the wild beasts are ruled by it alone. The tricks that the great cats do are clubbed into them, and the elephants' ears are often so torn by the trainer's iron that they hang in ribbons.