"6. Would you not rather handle a snake, however dangerous, than the special interviewer of a London evening paper?"
This I followed with another letter, which explains the conflicting information received at the Zoo:
SKETCH BY MR. F. C. GOULD.
"Since writing to you it has struck me that probably your representative saw Mr. Bartlett senior, whereas I deposited my snake into the care of, and received my information from, Mr. Bartlett junior (the present superintendent). This may account for your representative describing in his article Mr. Bartlett drawing a circle the size of my snake on a visiting-card, and that, too, without the two ends of the circle coming into conjunction. This is so utterly absurd that it is evident Mr. Bartlett could not have seen the reptile at the time. The exact measurement of my baby serpent is seven and a-half inches in length—nearly an inch longer than the word 'Westminster' at the top of your front page—and it is still growing!"
So did the story grow—in correspondence, in prose, in verse, and in picture. Mr. F. C. Gould treated the subject in Japanese-Lika-Joka spirit, and from quantities of verse I select the following from the Sketch as the best:
"Picked up near the Zoological Gardens.
"'I am the snake of Regent's Park;
I lie in wait for men of mark.
I'd gladly give my latest breath
To fright a funny man to death.
So when from ambush I espy
A comic artist passing by,
I think there is no joy like this—
To stand upon my tail and hiss.
For it is quite a novel charm
To see him start in wild alarm
And haste to tell the awful crimes
Of Horrid Serpents in the Times.
It used to be a bitter pang
That I was born without a fang,
That Nature made me as a toy
For any silly idle boy.
But now the humble snake may pass
For lurking cobra in the grass,
While people think that Regent's Park
Is Kipling Jungle after dark!'"
Several letters appeared. One from a "Harrow School Boy," in the Times, was generally accepted at the time as a solution of the mystery: