from that which is hurtful; so the elephant, determining upon a bout of wrong-doing, had some precedent to excuse him. The elephantine proportions of his misdemeanors, however, made his lapse from docility appalling to mere men and women whose individual wicked acts are naturally on so diminutive a scale; but, comparatively speaking, the gigantic mammal was simply “on the spree.” Neverthless, it desolated villages with nearly every horrible circumstance of cruelty lately practised by the Christians of Bulgaria, and laid its plans with such consummate cunning that skilled police, well mounted and patrolling the country, were baffled for many days in their pursuit of the midnight terror. It came and went with extraordinary secrecy and speed from point to point, leaving none alive upon the high roads to tell the pursuers which way it had gone, and only a smashed village and trampled corpses to show where it had last appeared. It confused its own tracks by doubling upon its pursuers and crossing the spoor of the elephants that accompanied them.
It was not merely wild. It was also mad — and as cunning and as cruel as a mad man.
But insanity itself may be accepted, if you like, as a tribute to the animal’s intelligence, for sudden downright madness presumes strong brain power. Owls never go mad. They may go silly, or they may be born idiots; but, as Oliver Wendell Holmes says, a weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself Stupidity often saves a man from insanity.
It is also curious to notice how the size of Jumbo strikes so many as being somehow very creditable to Behemoth. But praise of such a kind is hardly worth the
