, to view the rare animals in Exeter Change,--that gentleman being
assured by the elephant's keeper that, if he would offer the beast a
shilling, he would see the noble animal nod his head and drink a pot of
porter. The elephant had no sooner taken the shilling, which he did in
the mildest manner from the palm of Sir James's hand, than he gave it to
the keeper, and eagerly watched his return with the beer. The elephant
then, after placing his proboscis to the top of the tankard, drew up
nearly the whole of the beverage. The keeper observed, 'You will hardly
believe, gentlemen, but the little he has left is quite warm;' upon this
we were tempted to taste it, and it really was so. This animal was
afterwards disposed of for the sum of one thousand guineas."

THE ELEPHANT AND THE TAILOR.

This old story has been often told, but never so well as by Sydney Smith
in one of his lectures at the Royal Institution. "Every one knows the
old story of the tailor and the elephant, which, if it be not true, at
least shows the opinion the Orientals, who know the animal well,
entertain of his sagacity. An eastern tailor to the Court was making a
magnificent doublet for a bashaw of nine tails, and covering it, after
the manner of eastern doublets, with gold, silver, and every species of
metallic magnificence. As he was busying himself on this momentous
occasion, there passed by, to the pools of water, one of the royal
elephants, about the size of a broad-wheeled waggon, rich in ivory
teeth, and shaking, with its ponderous tread, the tailor's shop to its
remotest thimble. As he passed near the window, the elephant happened to
look in; the tailor lifted up his eyes, perceived the proboscis of the
elephant near him, and, being seized with a fit of facetiousness,
pricked the animal with his needle; the mass of matter immediately
retired, stalked away to the pool, filled his trunk full of muddy water,
and, returning to the shop, overwhelmed the artisan and his doublet with
the dirty effects of his vengeance."

DR JOHNSON ALLUDED TO AS "AN ELEPHANT."

"If an elephant could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great
deal would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy, ungraceful
animal." This was written by Horace Walpole to Miss Berry, in 1791, in
allusion to Dr Johnson's depreciation of Thomas Gray the poet.[192] It
is an acute observation, well worth being wrought out. There is a
grandeur and even a grace about this bulky beast