til I called in
Marchand, the chemist, and asked him if he could give me something to
bleach an elephant. He had an especially strong solution of peroxide of
hydrogen made up, and I selected the smallest animal out of our herd of
eighty to try it on. It happened to be the one which you just saw
working on the ballyhoo over there, which you noticed was the ordinary
slate color. We soaked cloths in the peroxide and covered the beast with
them and then put blankets on top. After they had been on for awhile we
washed the animal with ammonia and water and repeated the performance
until that elephant was as white as snow.

[Illustration: _"Forepaugh had eminent scientists examine the beast."_]

"Forepaugh was to open in Philadelphia, so I shipped our fake over
there, and when they had their street parade I followed right behind it
with our bleached animal on a truck which was liberally placarded. The
notices called attention to the fact that Forepaugh's alleged sacred
elephant was simply painted and that the men who did it were bunglers at
the business. 'LOOK AT THIS ONE!' read our largest placard. 'WE TELL
YOU THAT IT IS A FAKE! So is Forepaugh's, but he won't tell! This is A
BETTER JOB BY A BETTER ARTIST!' That made the Forepaugh people hot, and
they replied with a new bunch of affidavits and expert opinions from a
lot of University of Pennsylvania professors. That couldn't offset our
show-up, though, and the whole situation had become so mixed that the
public thought all of the elephants were fakes. We had the only genuine
one and the best fake also, but they were a pair of white elephants in
every sense of the term, and a losing proposition. The one which we had
bleached would only keep white for about two weeks, and as each
treatment cost seven hundred dollars Barnum called me off. The Forepaugh
bunch was trying to poison it, and as the whole thing was dead as a
money-making venture and white elephants a drug in the market, we let
this one regain its natural color. When the great herd was broken up it
was sold off, and I never saw it again until to-night."

"But what was the inside history of the Forepaugh white elephant?" asked
one of his companions, and the Colonel smiled as he lighted a fresh
cigar.

"I never knew it until this year, when one night over a friendly drink
Sam Watson, who is now a clown with the Big Show, confessed the whole
thing. Forepaugh is dead and the shows have been consolidated, so there
is n