und, and I attribute
his wonderful intelligence to the fact that he associated entirely with
human beings, almost from the day of his birth. I got him from the
captain of a tramp steamer which traded to the West Coast, and I paid a
goodish bit of money for him too. I have never dared to tell his early
history as it was told to me, for fear I should be laughed at for a
liar; but stranger things happen in the animal business than ever get
into print, and if I dared risk my reputation by telling the things
which actually occur in a menagerie, I should never need a Press Agent;
but a plausible lie is accepted where a truth which sounds improbable is
turned down."

The Press Agent looked at him reproachfully, but agreed with the
proposition.

"Do you know, I have found that to be true when I have visited the
newspaper offices," he said. "I have actually had to embroider some of
the accounts of things which have happened here."

"I suspected it, for I didn't recognize some of the stories when I saw
them in print," answered the Proprietor, smiling at him approvingly. He
consented to tell the history of Consul, the famous chimpanzee, when
the Stranger expressed his entire credulity and the Press Agent assumed
an encouraging and sympathetic attitude.

[Illustration: _"Jocko, giving a howl of rage, danced madly up and
down."_]

"Of course, I have to take the ship captain's word for what happened
before I bought him, but from the way the chimp developed and the
intelligence he displayed after he came into my possession, I am
prepared to believe it. He told me that he got him from the natives at
the mouth of a small river on the West Coast, where he anchored his
steamer to trade. They came off about the ship in their canoes, but he
did not care for the rubber and ivory they had to offer and he was about
to hoist anchor when one of them, who was in a small canoe with a woman,
motioned to him to stop. The woman was crouched up in the stern, nursing
what the captain thought was a baby, but when the man dragged it away
from her, in spite of her voluble protest, he saw that it was a small
chimpanzee. The man seemed desperately anxious to trade--and I imagine
the captain's trade goods were not the sort to meet the entire approval
of the missionaries--so that a bargain was concluded and the woman's
grief allayed by a generous share of the purchase price. As nearly as he
could make out, she had found the little thing in the jungle wh