"Say, are we going to listen to you animals talk or hear the story Umboo is going to tell us?" asked Humpo, the camel. "I thought he was going to make us forget the heat."
"So I am," said Umboo, in a kind voice, "Only I wanted to speak about old Jumbo, There used to be a song about him, many years ago. It went something like this, and I heard a little English boy sing it:
"Alice said to Jumbo:
'I love you!'
Jumbo said to Alice:
'I don't believe you do;
'Cause if you love me truly,
As you say you do,
Come over to America
To Barnum's show!'"
"That's the song they used to sing about Jumbo, more than twenty years ago," said Umboo.
"My! How can you remember so far back?" asked Chako.
"Oh, we elephants live to a good old age," said Umboo. "Why, I am fifty years old now, and yet I am young! Some of the elephants in the jungle lived to be a hundred and twenty years old!"
"Oh, my!" cried Chako. "Did they have circuses as long ago as that?"
"Yes, but not the kind that traveled about, and showed in white tents," said Umboo. "But I have heard my father and mother say that we elephants live to be very old."
"And can you remember so far back, when you were a baby in the jungle?" asked Humpo.
"Oh, yes, very easily," answered Umboo. "I am going to tell you a story about how first I was a little elephant in the great, green forest, or jungle, and then I'll tell you how I was caught, and worked in a lumber yard in India, and how I was then sold to a circus."