nable to resist. Then there was the
Iguanadon. He'd have brought a fortune to the box-office--"

"Which you'd have immediately lost," retorted Noah, "paying rent. When
you get a reptile of his size, that reaches thirty feet up into the air
when he stands on his hind-legs, the ordinary circus wagon of commerce
can't be made to hold him, and your menagerie-room has to have ceilings
so high that every penny he brought to the box-office would be spent
storing him."

"Mischievous, too," said Adam, "that Iguanadon. You couldn't keep
anything out of his reach. We used to forbid animals of his kind to
enter the garden, but that didn't bother him; he'd stand up on his hind-
legs and reach over and steal anything he'd happen to want."

"I could have used him for a fire-escape," said Mr. Barnum; "and as for
my inability to provide him with quarters, I'd have met that problem
after a short while. I've always lamented the absence, too, of the
Megalosaurus--"

"Which simply shows how ignorant you are," retorted Noah. "Why, my dear
fellow, it would have taken the whole of an ordinary zoo such as yours to
give the Megalosaurus a lunch. Those fellows would eat a rhinoceros as
easily as you'd crack a peanut. I did have a couple of Megalosaurians on
my boat for just twenty-four hours, and then I chucked them both
overboard. If I'd kept them ten days longer they'd have eaten every
blessed beast I had with me, and your Zoo wouldn't have had anything else
but Megalosaurians."

"Papa is right about that, Mr. Barnum," said Shem. "The whole Saurian
tribe was a fearful nuisance. About four hundred years before the flood
I had a pet Creosaurus that I kept in our barn. He was a cunning little
devil--full of tricks, and all that; but we never could keep a cow or a
horse on the place while he was about. They'd mysteriously disappear,
and we never knew what became of 'em until one morning we surprised Fido
in--"

"Surprised who?" asked Doctor Johnson, scornfully.

"Fido," returned Shem. "'That was my Creosaurus's name."

"Lord save us! Fido!" cried Johnson. "What a name for a Creosaurus!"

"Well, what of it?" asked Shem, angrily. "You wouldn't have us call a
mastodon like that Fanny, would you, or Tatters?"

"Go on," said Johnson; "I've nothing to say."

"Shall I send for a physician?" put in Boswell, looking anxiously at his
chief, the situation was so extraordinary.

Solomon and Carlyle giggled; and the Doctor having