The lovely Clara revived shortly, and opening her eyes shut them again with a great scream. She was in the den of the African gorilla. There was more fainting, and more anguish on the part of Jack, who cursed his luck and his folly together. "It's Jack; it's only Jack," he cried, with real agony, as he tore off his mask; and the young lady, slowly returning to her senses, once more opened her eyes and beheld her lover, a real African gorilla from his chin downwards, but possessing a very resolute yet anxious human head, very like Jack Gale's, with the scalp and grinning jaws of the defunct monster hanging behind his ears.
This was an extraordinary situation; a nice young lady in a strange garret, confronted by an erratic young man in semi-gorilla costume; his countenance flushed with excitement and exercise; his eyes wild with anxiety and alarm, and his whole manner that of a person who is in a state of utter quandary. The truth of history compels me to record the fact that Miss Clara Coriander threw up her hands and laughed as she would die. She was a sensible girl, and liked a good joke. Old Coriander's plans were laid bare to her clear vision in one moment; she saw through the whole trick; and laughed in the face of the astonished Mr. Gale. "Oh, Jack," she said, as soon as she could recover her breath, "how could you be such a fool? Where Oh, oh, oh!" To all of which Jack could only reply by instalments. But by secluding the young lady on the stairway, he succeeded in preparing for their return to the Coriander mansion. Through the half-deserted streets the young couple went in different guise from that in which they had before astonished those who saw them flee. The gorilla delivered up the old man's daughter, and was glad to be told that the menagerie, not quite ruined, must needs he closed for a few months for repairs.
The show opened again in due season with new attractions, under the management of Coriander and Gale. But in all the lines of cages of rare beasts, no African gorilla was to be found. In lieu thereof they showed a handsomely stuffed skin of the much lamented beast, which came to an untimely end in consequence of a cold caught by exposure at the great menagerie fire. Coriander's heart relented when Jack saved his daughter from the burning building, and he found his inventive genius invaluable in the show business.
I have seen the only young gorilla born on American soil, of which there is any account. It has pink cheeks and blue eyes, and is learning to answer to the name of Clara Gale.
THE FATE OF YOUNG CHUBB
When Mr. Chubb, the elder, returned from Europe, he brought with him from Geneva, a miniature musical-box, long and very narrow, and altogether of hardly greater dimensions, say, then a large pocket- knife. The instrument played four cheerful little tunes, for the benefit of the Chubb family, and they enjoyed it. Young Henry Chubb enjoyed it to such an extent that one day, just after the machine had been wound up ready for action he got to sucking the end of it, and in a moment of inadvertence it slipped, and he swallowed it. The only immediate consequence of the accident was that a harmonic stomach-ache was organized upon the interior of Henry Chubb and he experienced a restlessness which he well knew would defy the soothing tendencies of peppermint and make a mockery of paregoric.
And Henry Chubb kept his secret in his own soul and in his stomach, also determined to hide his misery from his father, and to spare the rod to the spoiled child—spoiled, at any rate, as far as his digestive apparatus was concerned.
But that evening, at the supper table, Henry had eaten but one mouthful of bread, when strains of wild, mysterious music were suddenly wafted from under the table. The family immediately made an effort to discover whence the sounds came, although Henry Chubb set there filled with agony and remorse and bread and tunes, and desperately asserted his belief that the music came from the cellar where the hired girl was concealed with a harp. He well knew that Mary Ann was unfamiliar with the harp, but he was frantic with anxiety to hide his guilt. Thus it is that one crime leads to another.
But he could not disguise the truth forever, and that very night, while the family was at prayers, Henry all at once began to hiccup, and the musicbox started off without warning, with "way down on the Swanee River," with variations. Whereupon the paternal Chubb arose from his knees and grasped Henry kindly but firmly by his hair and shook him up, and inquired what he meant by such conduct.
And Henry asserted that he was practicing something for a Sunday-school celebration, which old Chubb intimated was a singularly thin explanation.