CONTENTS
[CHAPTER I]
[CHAPTER II]
[CHAPTER III]
[CHAPTER IV]
[CHAPTER V]
[CHAPTER VI]
[CHAPTER VII]
[CHAPTER VIII]
[CHAPTER IX]
[CHAPTER X]
[CHAPTER XI]
A WORD TO THE WISE
A well-known English novelist once told me that of all his published works—and their name is legion—one only had been founded on fact, and that one his critics united in condemning as impossible and unnatural. In the case of my own little book, I venture to forestall such criticism by stating that while the characters which appear in its pages are at the most only composite photographs, the one "impossible" and "unnatural" figure, the elephant, had his foundation in actual fact; and the history of its acquirement by the Consul, as hereinafter set forth, is the truthful narration of an actual experience, one of many episodes, stranger than fiction, which went to form the warp and woof of my diplomatic experience.
DAVID DWIGHT WELLS.
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH THE SAME QUESTION IS ANSWERED IN TWO WAYS
Harold Stanley Malcolm St. Hubart Scarsdale, Esq., of "The Towers," Sussex, sat uncomfortably on a very comfortable chair. His patent-leather boots were manifestly new, his trousers fresh from the presser, his waistcoat immaculate, while his frock coat with its white gardenia, and his delicate grey suede gloves, completed an admirable toilet. He was, in short, got up for the occasion, a thoroughly healthy, muscular, well-groomed animal; good-natured too, fond in his big-hearted boyish way of most other animals, and enough of a sportsman to find no pleasure in winging tame or driven grouse and pheasants. He was possessed, moreover, of sufficient brains to pass with credit an examination which gave him a post in the War Office, and had recently become, owing to the interposition of Providence and a restive mare, the eldest son.