that's a
little thing in where I'm telling you.'

"This made the captain do some thinking, for Albert looked awful big and
his eye looked awful small, and they didn't want to bungle the job.
'Well,' said he, 'is there any other place we can aim at except his
eye?'

"'Aim here,' I told him, and I drew a circle with a piece of chalk just
back of his left foreleg, a circle about as big as your hand. When a man
has cut up as many elephants as I have he knows where the heart is. But
most men don't.

"After this there was a hush, while the whole crowd held its breath, and
old Albert looked at me out of his little eyes as much as to say, 'So
you're going to let 'em do me after all, are you?' and then came the
sharp command, 'Ready, fire!' and thirty-two rifle-balls started for
that chalk-mark. And how many do you think got there? Five out of
thirty-two; I counted 'em, but five did the business. Poor old Albert
dropped without a sound or a struggle." Newman sighed at the memory.

"Isn't there some exaggeration," I asked, "in what you said about
shooting an elephant full of holes without killing him?"

"Exaggeration!" answered Newman. "Not a bit of it. Why, there was an
elephant named Samson with the Cole show, and he got loose once in a
town out in Idaho and ran through the streets crazy mad, killing horses,
smashing into houses, ripping the whole place wide open. Well, sir, they
shot at him with Winchesters, revolvers, shot-guns, every darned thing
they had, until that elephant was full of lead, but he went off all
right the next day, and never seemed any the worse for it up to the day
when he was burned to death with the Barnum show at Bridgeport."

The mention of this catastrophe reminded me of reports that wild beasts
in a burning menagerie are silent before the flames, and I asked Mr.
Newman if he believed it.

"No, sir," said he; "it isn't true. I was in Bridgeport when the Barnum
show burned up, and I never heard such roaring and screaming. It was
awful. Even the rhinoceros, which can't make much noise, was running
around the yard grunting and squealing, with flames four feet high
shooting up from his back and sides. You see, a rhinoceros is almost
solid fat, and as soon as he caught fire he burned like an oil-tank."

"Didn't you save any lions or tigers?"

He shook his head. "Wasn't any use trying. They'd have been shot by
policemen as fast as we could get 'em out. Besides, we couldn't get 'em
out. We concen