"His whole delight was in his trade. He spent all his money in bears, and run in debt for 'em besides, and there they wos a growling away in the front cellar all day long and ineffectually gnashing their teeth, vile the grease o' their relations and friends wos being retailed in gallipots in the shop above, and the first floor winder wos ornamented with their heads; not to speak o' the dreadful aggrawation it must have been to 'em to see a man always a walkin' up and down the pavement outside, with the portrait of a bear in his last agonies, and underneath, in large letters, 'Another fine animal was slaughtered yesterday at Jenkinson's!' Hous'ever, there they wos, and there Jenkinson wos, till he was took very ill with some inward disorder, lost the use of his legs, and wos confined to his bed, vere he laid a wery long time; but sich wos his pride in his profession even then, that wenever he wos worse than usual the doctor used to go down-stairs, and say, 'Jenkinson's wery low this mornin', we must give the bears a stir;' and as sure as ever they stirred 'em up a bit, and made 'em roar, Jenkinson opens his eyes, if he wos ever so bad, calls out, 'There's the bears!' and rewives agin."
The author of a most amusing article in the seventy-seventh volume of the Edinburgh Review, on the modern system of advertising, records that, in his puff, the first vendor of bears' grease cautioned his customers to wash their hands in warm water after using it, to prevent them from assuming the hairy appearance of a paw.
A Bearable Pun.
An illiterate vendor of beer wrote over his door at Harrowgate, "Bear sold here." "He spells the word quite correctly," said Theodore Hook, "if he means to apprise us that the article is his own Bruin."[33]
Polar Bear. (Thalassarctos maritimus.)
Shaved Bear.
Robert Southey ("Common-Place Book," 4th ser., p. 359) says:—"At Bristol I saw a shaved monkey shown for a fairy; and a shaved bear, in a check waistcoat and trousers, sitting in a great chair as an Ethiopian savage. This was the most cruel fraud I ever saw. The unnatural position of the beast, and the damnable brutality of the woman-keeper, who sat upon his knee, put her arm round his neck, called him husband and sweetheart, and kissed him, made it the most disgusting spectacle I ever witnessed. Cottle was with me."
He also tells of a fellow exhibiting a dragon-fly under a magnifier at a country fair, and calling it the great High German "Heiter-Keiter."