"When they are accustomed to you and you to them," he continued, "the next thing is to teach them tricks, and this takes a good deal of time and a good deal of whipping. The lions are the smartest. You can train a lion to do the ordinary tricks, such as jumping through hoops and over gates, in about five weeks, and a lioness in about six weeks. The leopard is next in intelligence to the lion, and learns almost as readily. A tiger would take eight weeks to learn what the leopard learns in six, and a tigress would take nine weeks for the same work. The hyena is the stupidest, and you can't do anything with him in less than four months. The most difficult thing of all is to teach a wild beast to let you lie on it without eating you. I do this every night with one of the tigresses, but she don't like it one bit; it aggravates her inwardly.
"The great secret of wild-beast taming is to know when to use the whip and when not to use it. But as a matter of fact there is no such thing as really taming a tiger or a lion. A man may have some influence over it, but he is never quite safe with it. No wild beast has ever been actually tamed. A lion will tear you merely out of bad temper occasionally; but a tiger is more vicious, and will attack you from sheer love of blood."
It was now time for the exhibition, and I wished the showman and Señor Delmonio good-day. Some time afterward, when I again met the latter, he had abandoned the foolish business of trifling with the angry passions of wild beasts, and was devoting himself to the more sensible business of training horses.
THE LITTLE PIE-PLANT GATHERER.