Tinkle, the Trick Pony: His Many Adventures

by Richard Barnum

Then Tinkle told of having met Dido, of what the dancing bear had said, and of what he had told Tinkle about Tum Tum and Mappo, the merry monkey.

“Is Mappo in this circus?” asked Tinkle, as he finished his little story.

“Yes, and you’ll probably see him in a day or so,” answered Tum Tum.

That afternoon, when the performance was over, Mr. Drake, the man who had bought Tinkle from the man who had stolen him, came to where the pony was lying down in the tent and said:

“Now we’ll see what you know and how much I have to teach you. We will begin with some easy tricks.”

Then began a busy time for Tinkle, not only that day but for a number of days. When the circus was not traveling from one city to another or when a performance was not being held in the tents, Mr. Drake taught Tinkle tricks. Tinkle, the first time it occurred, did not know what was going to happen when, instead of being allowed to go to sleep after the show, he and the other ponies and animals were put in the big railroad cars and the whole train was hauled away by an engine.

Tinkle did not know what was happening but the other ponies told him it was all right, that he would not be hurt, that they were only going to another city to give a show there and that this happened nearly every day or night. Tinkle soon became used to travel, and rather liked it.

It would take too long to tell you how Tinkle was taught to do many different tricks. It was not so easy as at first he had thought it would be, and many times he could not understand what Mr. Drake wanted him to do.

In time he learned how to go to a box, in which were a number of flags or handkerchiefs, of different colors—red, white and blue.

“Bring me a blue flag,” Mr. Drake would say; and though at first Tinkle could not tell one color from another, he soon learned to do so. And he could tell, by hearing the word “blue,” that it was not the red or the white flag the trainer wanted, but the other. So, though Tinkle had no word in his own language for blue, he knew what that sound meant, and for which flag it stood.