that I had not taken the opportunity to find out something
about the history of the animal, and looked over the audience to try to
locate the couple, but they had left the building. One of the keepers
told me that she had screamed when she recognized the bear and called it
by name. She was trying to bribe him to let her go into the cage when
the artist came up and expostulated with her, and they had an awful row
before coming to my office. I heard nothing more from them and we
shipped the animals at Havre the following day. The traveling dens were
placed in the 'tween decks, which is not a pleasant place to be when the
ship is tossing about, and I was surprised the second day out to find
the woman who had tried to purchase Mephisto standing in front of his
cage in that smelly place, talking to the bear as if it were a child.
She laughed when I came up to her, and told me that as I would not part
with the bear I would have to take her with the show. I, too, laughed,
for I have a large family of daughters, and I knew that the simple
traveling gown which she wore had cost more than two months' salary of
my best trainer, but to my great surprise she was in dead earnest, and
asked me seriously if I would not let her train a group of animals."

The Press Agent grew very attentive, but the Proprietor told him that he
was not talking for publication, and that a name which occupied several
pages of the Almanach de Gotha was sacred, even from an American
promoter of publicity.

"And she does carry that name and was born to it," he continued, "but I
can't tell you what it is. She didn't tell it to me and it was not on
the passenger list, but the ambassador from a great European nation came
on from Washington to see her and remonstrate with her and to influence
me to exclude her from the show. I wouldn't consent to that, but I am
afraid that the accident of the bear's going blind will be the cause of
my losing an act which promised to be sensational."

[Illustration: _"The bear sat comfortably on the seat beside me."_]

"You have kept it quiet enough," said the Press Agent with a trace of
resentment in his voice. "It sounds to me as if it ought to be good for
a front-page column in every New York paper."

"As I told you, there are reasons why I can't exploit it," answered the
Proprietor. "I am counting upon it for my opening sensation at the Paris
Hippodrome next winter, and I don't intend to discount it before a Coney
Island a