re. I'd like to get
you, but I can't. I'll do anything you want, and I'll be dreadful good,
but don't hit my poor sore nose.'

"But man is the boss, and he can't afford to be so easy. Drive the
lesson home that you're boss. Rub it in. Don't stop when he quits. Make
him swallow the medicine and lick the spoon. Make him kiss your foot on
his neck holding him down in the dirt. Make him kiss the stick that's
beaten him.--Watch!"

And Hannibal, the largest lion in captivity, with all his teeth, captured
out of the jungle after he was full-grown, a veritable king of beasts,
before the menacing broomstick in the hand of a sliver of a man, backed
deeper and more crumpled together into the corner. His back was bowed
up, the very opposite muscular position to that for a spring, while he
drew his head more and more down and under his chest in utter abjectness,
resting his weight on his elbows and shielding his poor nose with his
massive paws, a single stroke of which could have ripped the life of
Collins quivering from his body.

"Now he might be tricky," Collins announced, "but he's got to kiss my
foot and the stick just the same. Watch!"

He lifted and advanced his left foot, not tentatively and hesitantly, but
quickly and firmly, bringing it to rest on the lion's neck. The stick
was poised to strike, one act ahead of the lion's next possible act, as
Collins's mind was one thought ahead of the lion's next thought.

And Hannibal did the forecasted and predestined. His head flashed up,
huge jaws distended, fangs gleaming, to sink into the slender, silken-
hosed ankle above the tan low-cut shoes. But the fangs never sank. They
were scarcely started a fifth of the way of the distance, when the
waiting broomstick rapped on his nose and made him sink it in the floor
under his chest and cover it again with his paws.

"He ain't crazy," said Collins. "He knows, from the little he knows,
that I know more than him and that I've got him licked to a
fare-you-well. If he was crazy, he wouldn't know, and I wouldn't know
his mind either, and I wouldn't be that one jump ahead of him, and he'd
get me and mess the whole cage up with my insides."

He prodded Hannibal with the end of the broom-handle, after each prod
poising it for a stroke. And the great lion lay and roared in
helplessness, and at each prod exposed his nose more and lifted it
higher, until, at the end, his red tongue ran out between his fangs and
licked the