trated on elephants, and saved all the herd but five.
There were free elephants all over Bridgeport that night, and a queer
thing was we had to look sharp that some of the elephants we'd saved
didn't run back into the fire. You know how horses will go back into a
burning stable. Well, elephants are just the same. That's how we lost
the white elephant. She walked straight into the blaze, when she might
just as well have walked out through the open door."

By this time most of the company at "Billy's" had gathered about to
listen, for Newman was a veteran among veterans, and was now in the full
swing of reminiscence. He went back to his earliest days, back to Putnam
County, New York, where young men might well be drawn to the circus
life, so many famous showmen has this region produced--"Jim" Kelly and
Seth B. Howes and Langway and the Baileys.

"I started with Langway, the old lion-tamer," said Newman, "and he was
one of the best. I'll never forget what he told me once when he was
breaking in a den of lions and tigers--there were three lions and two
tigers, all full grown and fresh from the jungle.

"'Bill,' said he, 'I'm an old man, and this here is my last den. I won't
break in no more big cats, but I'll break this den in so they'll never
work for another man after I'm gone. It'll look easy what I do, and
folks'll want you to tackle 'em, Bill, but don't you never do it, for if
you do these cats'll chew ye up sure.'

[Illustration: MAN IN CAGE WITH LIONS.]

"Well, he worked that den in great shape for a year or so, and then he
died, and I minded his words. I let those lions and tigers alone. They
hired a lion-tamer named Davis to work 'em, and sure enough he got
chewed up bad, just as the old man said he would, and the end of it was
that nobody ever _did_ work that den again; it couldn't be done,
although they'd been like kittens with Langway. What he did to 'em's
always been a mystery."

Newman paused, as impressive story-tellers do, and then, drawing once
more upon his memories, he told how a terrible death came to poor
"Patsy" Meagher as he was drilling a herd of elephants once in winter
quarters at Columbus, Ohio.

"It was the day before Thanksgiving," he said. "I'll never forget it,
and a big bull elephant named Syd took the order wrong, went 'right
face' instead of 'left face,' or something, and 'Patsy' got mad and
hooked him pretty hard. Some think it was 'Patsy's' fault, because he
gave the wrong order b