cted
her attention. With considerable difficulty she was secured and again
chained to the posts, and the other animals were also quieted. During
all the confusion the baby had stood motionless in the place to which
his mother had flung him, and had regarded the whole scene with a look
of wise solemnity such as only a baby can assume.

When quiet was restored, he became very frisky, and was willing to make
friends with everybody. He ran about with his mouth wide open, and his
little trunk pointing upward in the funniest way possible. He blundered
about here and there, running against all sorts of things, and finally
seemed overjoyed to be taken back to his mother, who has ever since
shown the greatest fondness for him. He is thirty-five inches high, and
weighs 214 pounds, so that he is about the size of a large Newfoundland
dog. He is fed by means of a nursing-bottle made of a yard of rubber
hose and a large funnel. One end of the hose is put in his mouth, and
the other is attached to the funnel, into which the keepers pour warm
milk until the baby shows that he has had enough by throwing down his
end of the tube.

PRACTICAL JOKES.

BY FRANK BELLEW.

As a general rule, practical jokes are a kind of fun that should not be
encouraged; but there are a few harmless ones which may be made the
means of a good deal of innocent merriment.

Tom Hood, who was one of the most kindly and genial of men, as well as
one of the greatest of poets, was very fond of playing little practical
jokes on members of his own family and immediate circle of intimate
friends. On one occasion, when his wife had made a magnificent English
plum-pudding, as a Christmas present for some German friends, Hood
surreptitiously got hold of it, and filled it with wooden skewers, which
he ran through in every direction, and in this condition it was sent by
the unsuspicious Mrs. Hood to her friends in Germany, who no doubt
thought English cookery a most eccentric art.

On another occasion he wrote as follows, from London, to an intimate
friend, one Lieutenant Franck, of the Prussian army:

"I also send for yourself an imitation gold-fish. It appears that there
is something in the color or taste of the gold-fish which renders it
irresistible to other fish as a bait. They are quite mad after it. It
appears to be intended to be sunk with a weight, and pulled about under
water, or else to float on the top; but they say it is taken in anyway."

[Ill