miniously cleped the "Pig and Tinder-box." When first I met the pantomime elephant I cannot remember. But I have often met him since, and more than once I have been permitted to refresh one or both ends of him with half-and-half. He is the only elephant of my acquaintance whose magnificence has turned out to be hollow. Anatomically, he is simple, his viscera consisting almost entirely of two convenient handles, whereby his trunk and tail may be made to swing. I knew an exceptionally talented forelegs, who drew extra pay for his ability to knock off a stage policeman's helmet with the trunk. But he was subject to the infirmities of genius, and once, under an exceptional burden of half-and-half, fell ruinously down a trap-door with all the front half of the structure and the Great Mogul, who was in the howdah. Also, I knew a hindlegs—but that is another story.
The pantomime elephant.
The burglar.
The late Albert Smith once knew a sponge-cake elephant—but that also is another story. There is moreover another story still—any number of other stories—about the burglar-elephant. He is always in the papers. He gets away from a menagerie and shoves in the front of a tuck-shop with his head; after which he eats the tuck-shop, shutters and all, and goes to sleep on the ruins of the house. Sometimes he goes the rounds of a market and samples things in general. He is very catholic in his tastes, and will toss off a scuttleful of coals or a suit of ready-made clothes with equal freedom and good humour. He has also been known to break into a pill factory, being afterwards used as an advertisement for the pills. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals seems to have had no means of preventing the perpetration of this form of revenge.
Stoking.
Here, at the Zoo, the elephants are much too respectably brought up for this sort of thing. Still they are not muffs, and will take their beer and 'bacca in ali good-fellowship. Leave no unprotected pocket wherein cigars within the sweep of Jung Perchad's trunk. For 'bacca he will chew and beer drink, if Iles, his keeper, but leave him for two minutes to his wicked devices. Here we have the elephant's one little vice. He will hang about a
