moved it to a strange den it stumbled over everything. I experimented by
bringing Tramp in front of its cage, but with the loss of sight the
hypnotic power has apparently deserted it, and the cat paid no attention
to it. Finally I called in the doctor and you heard him pronounce his
verdict."

"But where is the great loss?" asked the Stranger.

"It is principally a loss in prospective profits," replied the
Proprietor as he beckoned to the waiter. "I had the new act all planned
out for Paris--the lady was to appear masked for her performance, but I
knew her identity would be discovered and that it would be a tremendous
sensation. I don't know how much of her desire to train animals is due
to eccentricity and as a protest against the conventions which hedged
in her former life, and how much to her strange infatuation for
Mephisto, but since its blindness has developed she has lost interest
and I suppose she will renege on the whole business."

"How do you account for it all--her infatuation for the bear and her
intuitive knowledge of the dispositions of the lions?" asked the
Stranger.

"I don't try to account for anything. It is one of the thousand things
about animals and the million things about women which no mere man can
understand," replied the Proprietor laughing. "I have simply given you
the facts of the situation and you can draw your own conclusions, but
the bear's blindness upsets my plans and possibly prevents a sensation
in circles which approach royalty."

"Women _are_ difficult to understand," agreed the Press Agent as the
Proprietor paused to moisten his throat, "and a man who is in love with
one of 'em is just about as unaccountable for his actions. I had that
fact engraved upon the tablets of my memory when a guy named Merritt and
myself were running a dime museum in Pittsburg. Merritt was a good,
hard-headed business man as a rule and he made a first-class lecturer;
but when I found that he was taking to 'dropping into poetry' and
delivering his descriptions of the freaks in verse, I began to get leary
about the condition of the contents of his head. The poetry was always
extemporaneous and was pretty bad, but it amused the crowd when it
wasn't too sentimental.

"As I say, the poetry was strictly on the bum, but what it lacked in
quality it made up in quantity and he could spiel it off by the yard.
Whenever he got stuck for a rhyme he would blow the whistle which he
used to call the crowd in fro