Stuckart, the famous
prize beauty, and nearly killed her. Since then she has lived in
solitary confinement.

The stillness now would be absolute but for a very curious sound, which
comes out of the gloom beyond the big cage of leopards and tigers. It is
the elephant Topsy sleeping. There is no stranger sight in a menagerie
than that of an elephant asleep. The huge legs are bent to right angles
at the knees, the trunk is curled into the mouth, and the whole suggests
a shapeless mound of mud or clay, or a half-inflated balloon. Head and
tail are alike; the ears lie flat; the eyes are quite concealed in
wrinkled flesh, but from somewhere within this seemingly dead mass comes
a long, hissing sound, like the exhaust from a steam-pipe. This sound
continues for several seconds and then stops, to be repeated after an
interval of silence.

[Illustration: A ROYAL BENGAL TIGER.]

So complete is the illusion of the sleeping elephant's not being alive
at all, but only a mound of dead matter, that, abstractedly, I set the
alarm-clock down upon the flat bone of the forehead. No sooner have I
done so than I spring back startled, leaving the clock ticking on the
elephant's head. There has been no noise or movement, no indication of
displeasure, no effort to do me harm. But suddenly, in the middle of
the huge, mud-colored mass there has appeared a round, red circle about
two inches in diameter. The elephant has simply opened his eye. The eye
does not roll, or move, or wink. It merely remains open on me for a few
seconds, a round, staring circle, and then disappears as suddenly as it
came.

Leaving Topsy, I resume my wanderings among the cages. The whole place
is asleep, and I am seized with intense desire to awaken something. I
take a long straw, and tickle Black Prince on his black nose. His eyes
open instantly, and the heavy paw swings round like the working-beam of
an engine, only more quickly, to crush the straw for its impertinence. I
tickle him again, and again he strikes, with force enough to knock down
a horse. As I continue, his blows grow quicker and heavier, and his big
tusks snap at the troublesome straw. Finally, in desperation, he starts
up, and, throwing back his magnificent head, looks at me out of his
brown, wicked eyes, lifts his chin, curls down his lower lip a little,
and bellows forth a low, plaintive sound, more like the mooing of a cow
than the roar of a lion. Then, apparently ashamed of this uninspiring
soun