“Many years afterwards I was staying at the house of some French friends of ours near Versailles, when one of the children—for there was a large family—ran into the drawing-room, looking very excited, to say that there was a wonderful performing bear, which had come into the garden, and they had now got it in the nursery, which opened on to the garden. The bear was doing the most extraordinary things, the child said, and would we come to see it? We elders of the party went off to the nursery immediately, for it sounded alarming to have a bear playing with the children. As we entered, I at once recognised in the bear’s master, who was standing in a corner of the room, and looking on with great pride at his bear’s performances, my old friend Auguste.
“I told Jacquot’s story to my friends, and you may be sure the bear and its master were both made much of.”
CROSS TOMMY.
The bird that will not sing,
The bell that will not ring,
The wheel that won’t go round about,
The horse that will not spring,
And the child that won’t be happy