But, as a matter of fact, nothing could well be more offensive, more unsympathetic, more unworthy of the elephant, than this stereotyped formula of admiration. That an elephant did once so unbecomingly demean himself as to squirt the contents of a puddle over a tailor and his shop is infinitely discreditable to the gigantic pachyderm; and every compliment of sagacity paid to it on account of that dirty street-boy trick is an affront to the lordly beast which ranks to-day, in the Belgian expedition to Africa, as one of the noblest pioneers of modern commerce and the greatest of living missionaries, and in the Afghan war as one of the most devoted and valued of her Majesty’s servants in the East.
His docility, again, is an easy cry, for was not Jumbo to be seen, every day of the week, carrying children up and down a path, and round and round a clump of bushes, backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, without doing the children any harm, or even needing the keeper’s voice to tell him when a fair pennyworth of ride had been enjoyed? But upon such docility as this it is an insult to found respect, for surprise at such results argues a prior suspicion that the elephant would eat the children or run amuck among the visitors to the Zoological Gardens. Of its splendid docility there are abundant anecdotes, and among them are some which are really worthy of the sole living representative of the family of the mastodon and the mammoth.
Such a one is the old Mahratta story of the standard-bearing elephant that by its docility won a great victory for its master the Peishwa. The huge embattled beast was carrying on its back the royal ensign, the rallying-
