Side Show Studies | Page 9

the smaller animals uneasy. The woman who was described on the programme as "Miss ----, Famous Society Woman," had torn herself away from her arduous social duties with the Four Hundred to exhibit a troupe of leopards to a Coney Island audience, her identity concealed by a small black mask, and her performance in the big cage was interrupted by the noise; so the Proprietor thought it time to interfere.
[Illustration: "He smoked his cigar in the lobby like any other guest."]
The Prima Donna laughed good-naturedly as he helped to brush the sawdust and litter from her dress and tactfully drew her away, and Jocko quieted down and implored her to return; but she was accustomed to gentler wooing, and refused to put her dainty gown again in jeopardy.
"Jocko gave quite a performance to-night," said the Proprietor as he joined the Press Agent and the Stranger at the table, after the show. "That baboon is crazy about women; but he hasn't the discrimination of Consul, the most intelligent monkey that ever lived. You may remember that he was never quiet in his cage, but if a specially well-dressed woman stopped in front of it he played entirely to her and when she moved away his eyes followed her as long as she was in sight."
"There will never be another like Consul," said the Press Agent, shaking his head sadly. "He made my job a sinecure, for he was good for a column any day and a full page on Sundays."
"Never until the Missing Link is discovered," replied the Proprietor. "I don't believe a more human monkey will ever be found, and I attribute his wonderful intelligence to the fact that he associated entirely with human beings, almost from the day of his birth. I got him from the captain of a tramp steamer which traded to the West Coast, and I paid a goodish bit of money for him too. I have never dared to tell his early history as it was told to me, for fear I should be laughed at for a liar; but stranger things happen in the animal business than ever get into print, and if I dared risk my reputation by telling the things which actually occur in a menagerie, I should never need a Press Agent; but a plausible lie is accepted where a truth which sounds improbable is turned down."
The Press Agent looked at him reproachfully, but agreed with the proposition.
"Do you know, I have found that to be true when I have visited the newspaper offices," he said. "I have actually had to embroider some of the accounts of things which have happened here."
"I suspected it, for I didn't recognize some of the stories when I saw them in print," answered the Proprietor, smiling at him approvingly. He consented to tell the history of Consul, the famous chimpanzee, when the Stranger expressed his entire credulity and the Press Agent assumed an encouraging and sympathetic attitude.
[Illustration: "Jocko, giving a howl of rage, danced madly up and down."]
"Of course, I have to take the ship captain's word for what happened before I bought him, but from the way the chimp developed and the intelligence he displayed after he came into my possession, I am prepared to believe it. He told me that he got him from the natives at the mouth of a small river on the West Coast, where he anchored his steamer to trade. They came off about the ship in their canoes, but he did not care for the rubber and ivory they had to offer and he was about to hoist anchor when one of them, who was in a small canoe with a woman, motioned to him to stop. The woman was crouched up in the stern, nursing what the captain thought was a baby, but when the man dragged it away from her, in spite of her voluble protest, he saw that it was a small chimpanzee. The man seemed desperately anxious to trade--and I imagine the captain's trade goods were not the sort to meet the entire approval of the missionaries--so that a bargain was concluded and the woman's grief allayed by a generous share of the purchase price. As nearly as he could make out, she had found the little thing in the jungle when it was only a few days old and had reared it in place of a baby which had just died. She was a low type of woman, even for an African savage, but the maternal instinct was strong enough to make her grieve for little Consul, as the captain christened him. The monkey grieved over the separation, too, but sailors make much of animals and he soon became reconciled to it.
"Thousands of people saw him after I purchased him, and you can