“But with those wires—that’s torture, Boss!”
“Now, nix, Kid! Nix. Wait till I’ve got my bill of sale.”
Incidentally, when he received that, the new owner of the monkey band gave to the old-time trainer a tongue lashing as artistic as anything I ever heard, a little masterpiece on cruelty, on the cowardice of the human, and on decency in general. Following which, he bundled up his newly purchased monkeys, together with the properties which went with the act, and took them to winter quarters.
The next day I went out there with him. The monkeys were in their chairs, apparently waiting for something exceedingly important. No wires were visible. At a signal, an attendant ran forward with a small table, upon which were heaped the band instruments which at one time had represented so much torture to the little prisoners. Instantly there was chattering and excitement. The simians leaped from their chairs, scrambled toward the table, grasped a band instrument apiece and ran back to their places, each holding the musical apparatus tight to his lips and producing faint sounds that bore the resemblance of music! Yet the cruelty was gone! The wires had vanished! The monkeys were doing all this of their own accord and actually taking a delight in it! Like a pleased boy, the little circus owner walked to one of the simians and, against the monkey’s squealing protests, took away his horn.
“There,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, “that’s all you have to do.”
The mouthpiece of the horn had been refashioned overnight. Extending slightly outward from the interior was a metal standard bearing a thin reed; which would sound at the slightest suction, while just beyond this, at a point which would necessitate some effort on the part of the monkey to reach it, was an ordinary piece of old-fashioned, striped stick candy! When the monkey sucked on the candy, the reed sounded. By such a simple method had cruelty been changed to pleasure!
The same thing holds true for practically every other animal act. Instead of making animals pretend to work because they are afraid, they merely work for wages now. For years, in the old days, trainers had kicked and mauled and beaten a slow-thinking, lunk-headed hippopotamus in an effort to make him perform. It was impossible. The hip neither fought nor obeyed. It didn’t have enough sense to know that it could escape punishment by doing a few tricks. Then, with the coming of the newer régime into the circus business, the effort was discontinued. For years the big river hog merely wallowed in his trough. Then, one day, an animal trainer slanted his head and stood for a long time in thought.
“Believe I’ll work that hip,” he announced. And a week later, the miracle happened!
“Ladies-s-s-s-s-s and gentlemen-n-n-n” came the bawling outcry of the official announcer, “I take great pleasuah in announcing to you a featuah not on the program, a race between a swift-footed human being-g-g-g and a real, living, breathing hippopotamus-s-s, or sweating be-hemoth of Holy Writ. Wa-a-a-tch them!”
Into the hippodrome track from the menagerie connection came the trainer, running at a fair gait, while striving his best, seemingly, to outpace him, was a goggle-eyed hippopotamus, trotting as swiftly as his wobbly avoirdupois would permit. All the way around they went, the hippopotamus gaining for an instant, then the trainer taking the lead again, finally passing once more into the menagerie. The audience applauded delightedly. It was the first time it ever had seen a trained hippopotamus. Nor had it noticed the fact that, about fifty yards in advance of the racing pair, was a menagerie attendant, also running. The important thing about this person was that he carried a bucket of bran mash, and the hippopotamus knew that it was for him! He wasn’t racing the trainer, he was merely following a good meal; the old, old story of the donkey and the ear of corn!