e the cause of our joy, and sent the flowers to Madame
when our revelry was o'er.

By-the-way, the boots are exactly right. Now, with the love and
thanks of all the Aegises, I must close, for I haven't touched a
lesson for to-morrow.

Lovingly, gratefully, and thankfully yours,
ANNA I. CLIFFORD.

THE BABY ELEPHANT.

On the 10th of this month an event occurred in Philadelphia that has
aroused universal curiosity and interest. It was the birth of a baby
elephant, which immediately became famous as being the first of his
kind, so far as is known, ever born in captivity. All other elephants
brought to this country for exhibition, or used in Eastern countries as
beasts of burden, have been captured and tamed, and it has heretofore
been regarded as an unquestioned fact that they would not breed in
captivity.

The mother of the cunning little fellow who is attracting so much
attention is a large black Asiatic elephant named Hebe, and belongs to
the Great London Circus. She is acknowledged by all the other elephants
of the circus as their queen, and they are all loyally devoted to her.
She and six other large elephants have been spending the winter in a
stable at the corner of Twenty-third Street and Ridge Avenue,
Philadelphia. Here the elephants stand in a large room, each with their
hind-legs chained to posts.

[Illustration: THE EXCITED ELEPHANTS.]

Immediately upon the birth of the little elephant the others seemed to
become crazy with joy. They had been very quiet, but they now set up the
most tremendous bellowing and trumpeting imaginable. Some of them broke
their chains, and danced about in the most grotesque manner, besides
performing all the tricks they had been taught in the circus ring. The
general excitement communicated itself to Hebe, and in a moment she
became the most frantic of them all. Snapping the chains that bound her
to the posts as though they were threads, and apparently becoming, for
the first time, aware of the presence of her baby, she seized him with
her trunk and threw him with great force, twenty yards or more, to the
opposite side of the room. He fell close beside a large stove, around
which was a railing of heavy timbers. Rushing after him, his crazy
mother beat down this railing, threw over the stove, and in her madness
would probably have killed her baby, had not her keeper, who had fled
for his life upon the first outbreak, returned with help, and attra