"I had the honour afterwards of partaking of a pot of Barclay's entire with this same elephant, which high mark of his condescension was bestowed when I accompanied my friend, the late Sir James Wintel Lake, Bart., to view the rare animals in Exeter Change,—that gentleman being assured by the elephant's keeper that, if he would offer the beast a shilling, he would see the noble animal nod his head and drink a pot of porter. The elephant had no sooner taken the shilling, which he did in the mildest manner from the palm of Sir James's hand, than he gave it to the keeper, and eagerly watched his return with the beer. The elephant then, after placing his proboscis to the top of the tankard, drew up nearly the whole of the beverage. The keeper observed, 'You will hardly believe, gentlemen, but the little he has left is quite warm;' upon this we were tempted to taste it, and it really was so. This animal was afterwards disposed of for the sum of one thousand guineas."
The Elephant and the Tailor.
This old story has been often told, but never so well as by Sydney Smith in one of his lectures at the Royal Institution. "Every one knows the old story of the tailor and the elephant, which, if it be not true, at least shows the opinion the Orientals, who know the animal well, entertain of his sagacity. An eastern tailor to the Court was making a magnificent doublet for a bashaw of nine tails, and covering it, after the manner of eastern doublets, with gold, silver, and every species of metallic magnificence. As he was busying himself on this momentous occasion, there passed by, to the pools of water, one of the royal elephants, about the size of a broad-wheeled waggon, rich in ivory teeth, and shaking, with its ponderous tread, the tailor's shop to its remotest thimble. As he passed near the window, the elephant happened to look in; the tailor lifted up his eyes, perceived the proboscis of the elephant near him, and, being seized with a fit of facetiousness, pricked the animal with his needle; the mass of matter immediately retired, stalked away to the pool, filled his trunk full of muddy water, and, returning to the shop, overwhelmed the artisan and his doublet with the dirty effects of his vengeance."
Dr Johnson alluded to as "an Elephant."
"If an elephant could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy, ungraceful animal." This was written by Horace Walpole to Miss Berry, in 1791, in allusion to Dr Johnson's depreciation of Thomas Gray the poet.[192] It is an acute observation, well worth being wrought out. There is a grandeur and even a grace about this bulky beast and its motions well deserving the study of any one who has the opportunity. Elephants in our streets are not now so rare as they used to be. We saw three in one procession in the streets of Edinburgh in 1865.
Elephant's Skin.
"Did any of you ever see an elephant's skin?" asked the master of an infant school in a fast neighbourhood. "I have!" shouted a six-year-old at the foot of the class. "Where?" inquired the master, amused by his earnestness. "On the elephant!" was the reply.