“Learn how to box! Latest tricks of the ring taught! Exhibitions of shadow boxing with all the swings, jabs, and hooks daily! Reasonable fees—honey, apples, and all kinds of sweets accepted in unlimited quantities, honey preferred. Professor Zip. Studio, Central Park.”
“Bill” Snyder, head keeper of the Central Park Zoölogical Gardens, New York, N. Y., is the manager of Professor Zip, while James Coyle, who looks after the bear pen, is the active assistant of the professor. He has to think quickly and act quickly, for professor knows all the fine points of the boxing game, and when the keeper faces him for his training bout every day, he has to be on the alert. The professor knows the swings and jabs and can sidestep and dodge with the best of the ring artists.
Boxing is not the professor’s only accomplishment. He is “some” dancer, too, and plays his own music, furnishing original bear tunes for each lesson, playing it himself and composing as the dance proceeds. You don’t often find a boxing teacher who invents new dance steps and hops, composes music, and plays it, too.
Zip does all these things, and, besides, has tricks galore. For a nice red apple he’ll give an exhibition of shadow boxing that would shame any star of the ring. For a bit of candy he’ll turn somersaults and do all sorts of gymnastics, but when honey is handed to him, he is in his element, and that is the time he plays his bear tunes and steps off in a way that the best tango “bug” would envy.
Zip can be seen any day doing his “stunts” in the bear pen at the Central Park menagerie. He is a small, black-brown sloth bear, a new arrival at the park, for he has been there little more than a month, but in that time he has won more friends than any other animal in Bill Snyder’s collection. He is particularly popular with the children, who flock to his pen every afternoon to watch him dance and box with “Jimmie” Coyle. One particular friend of Zip is a young woman who visits the bear pen every afternoon with a supply of honey. Once he gets a taste of that, Zip goes through all his tricks. He plays the harmonica, dances, does gymnastic stunts, and then jerks “Buster,” his companion, to his feet and proceeds to knock him all around the ring. For Buster is a novice at the boxing game. Buster never could box until Zip came. Then, when he found that Zip got all the “sweets,” Buster became jealous, and one day tried to beat Zip at his own game. But Buster is too old to learn. He can’t get any music out of the harmonica on which Zip composes his dance music, and as for boxing, Zip just uses him for a punching bag.
When Jimmie Coyle found that Zip was a boxer, he, having ambitions in that line himself, went after the bear in true ring fashion, but Zip knew too many tricks, and, after giving Coyle a good pummelling the first two or three days, to show him how little he knew about the game, he permitted him to act as his trainer, so that every day the keeper and the bear have a few rounds in the pen, while Buster looks on and watches for pointers.
Zip was presented to the menagerie by Charles B. Knox, of Jamestown, N. Y. Mr. Knox got the bear when he was a cub, and in the next few months he became a great pet of the family. He used to ride with Mr. Knox on the front seat of his automobile and learned lots of tricks. Mr. Knox also had a big Newfoundland dog, “Jack,” and he and Zip became great chums; in fact, it is said that Zip learned all his dance steps from Jack, for they were often seen dancing together at Mr. Knox’s home. Finally, however, Zip became too big for a household pet, and it was feared that he might get too mischievous, so Mr. Knox offered him to Bill Snyder, who just then was looking for a bear to take the place of Buster’s mate, who died about six weeks ago. So Zip was shipped down to Central Park, and there he was in his element at once, for all the kiddies who know every animal in the park made friends with him and brought him good things to eat as soon as they saw he could do so many tricks.
Bits of Information.
Mining experts in the Philippines agree that a steady increase in the gold production of the islands may be expected for an indefinite period.
It is possible for the human ear to distinguish sounds over a range of about eleven octaves, but only seven and one-third octaves are used in music.