“Ha!” cried the man. “That’s the way to do it! I knew you could climb a tree, but you must do it when I tell you to, so as not to keep the people waiting when we begin our travels, and go all over the world. You will not find a bun up a tree every time I ask you to climb it, Dido,” said the bear’s keeper, “but I will always give you a treat when you have finished your tricks. Now come down, Dido!”
But Dido sat on the limb of the tree, eating the bun. It tasted so good he did not want to come down until he had finished it. Then he felt a pull on the chain that was fast to his collar.
“Come down, Dido! Come down!” called the man, and he pulled so hard on the chain that Dido nearly fell. Then the bear knew what was wanted of him, and down he climbed. But he had eaten the bun.
“Now we must do it again,” the keeper said. “Boy, put another bun up in the tree for Dido.”
So the boy did, and Dido climbed up and got that bun. Each time the man played a tune on the shiny brass horn, and it was a different tune from the one he played for Dido to dance. And, in a little while, Dido learned to climb up the tree whenever he heard this tune, and when the man told him to go up, whether there was a bun in the tree or not.
You see Dido did not have to learn how to climb a tree, for he knew that already. What he had to learn was to do it when the man wanted him to, and soon he did.
Dido could now do two tricks, if you call climbing a tree a trick. Dancing, I think, might really be called a trick for a bear, though men and women, as well as boys and girls, dance and do not think it a trick at all—that is, unless they are learning some new, fancy steps.
“Dido, you are a good little bear,” said the man, as the little cub came down out of the tree after having climbed up. “I wonder if you will learn to march like a soldier, and turn a somersault as easily as you learned to dance and climb a tree?”
Had the man only known it, Dido did not have to be taught to turn somersaults, for the little cub had often done this in the woods. But what Dido did have to learn was to turn a somersault when the man told him to.