BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1924
Copyright, 1922, 1923, 1924,
By Courtney Ryley Cooper.
All rights reserved
Published August, 1924
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
CARL BRANDT
WITH THE GENUINE AFFECTION
OF
“THE DEAR OLD RHINOCEROS”
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| Introduction | [ xi] | |
| CHAPTER | ||
| I | Inside the Training Den | [ 1] |
| II | Tramping it to Cagedom | [ 40] |
| III | Character in the Cages | [ 55] |
| IV | Kids of the Cages | [ 76] |
| V | The Dog Wagon | [ 109] |
| VI | Menagerie “Psych-Stuff” | [ 145] |
| VII | The Ellyphants are Coming-g-g! | [ 163] |
| VIII | A Hundred Tons of Prankishness | [ 191] |
| IX | The Keeper of the Bulls | [ 213] |
ILLUSTRATIONS
| Cagemates | [ Frontispiece] |
| PAGE | |
| In the steel arena | [ 6] |
| A tiger being trained to ride horseback | [ 6] |
| Feed a hippopotamus and he’ll do the rest | [ 38] |
| Bon, the baby hippo, for whom a man gave his life | [ 38] |
| Indigestion makes a lion vicious in the arena | [ 58] |
| Never try to do this if the lion has a headache | [ 58] |
| Baby wild cats, and they look their part | [ 64] |
| Representative circus dogs | [ 72] |
| Baby lions are always sought after as pets | [ 82] |
| A pair of real “teddy bears” | [ 82] |
| A sick baby orang-outang | [ 98] |
| A baby camel with its mother, the “dumbbell baby” ofthe menagerie | [ 98] |
| Baby Miracle, a few weeks before she decided to leavethis tempestuous world | [ 102] |
| Lion triplets | [ 102] |
| Collies make excellent circus dogs | [ 114] |
| Waiting to enter the big show | [ 114] |
| Young lions in the training den | [ 154] |
| Waiting for mealtime | [ 154] |
| An inbred lion, hence not a good worker | [ 160] |
| Circus men can’t beat these things, so they “jine ’em” | [ 160] |
| An elephant is the easiest to train and the hardest tohandle of any menagerie beast | [ 178] |
| A work elephant waiting for the crowds to leave thecircus grounds, when his labors will begin | [ 178] |
| Spring practice in the yard of winter quarters | [ 192] |
| The elephant turns naturally to clowning | [ 192] |
| In winter quarters | [ 216] |
| In the act of a breakaway | [ 216] |
| Old Mom and her girl friend Freida | [ 222] |
| Kas and Mo when they arrived in America | [ 222] |
INTRODUCTION
“HURRY! HURRY! TH’ BEEG SHOW IS STARTING-G-G-G-G!”
OF course, you’ve been to the circus. You got there just in time to hear the sideshow spieler tell you that there was fortay-y-y-y-y-five minutes for fun an’ amusement beforah th’ beeg show, th’ beeg show, would begin! Fortay-y-y-y-five minutes in which to view those stra-a-a-nge people, to see The Cannibal Twins, the Skeleton Dude, the Fat Lady who has taken everay-y-y-y known method of reducing in an attempt to rid herself of her half a ton of flesh, but who gets biggah, biggah and fattah, Ladies-s-s an’ Gents, everay living-g-g breathing-g-g moment of her life!