tration: _"There seems to be a sympathy between them."_]

"You have no idea how many animals are offered to the owner of a
menagerie and from what unusual sources the offers come," said the
Proprietor. "Travelers in far countries bring back strange animals as
pets or curiosities; people buy young wild animals which get beyond
control when they mature and become veritable white elephants on their
hands, and their owners have to dispose of them. I have had everything
from monkeys to lions brought to me, and so it did not surprise me when
an artist came to the Hippodrome in Paris last winter and asked me if I
didn't want to purchase a bear. He seemed anxious for me to see it
immediately, and at his earnest solicitation I got in a cab with him and
drove to his studio, which was situated on the far side of the Seine.
The bear which you saw examined to-night was in a small room adjoining
the studio, chained to a ring in the wall.

"The apartment was luxuriously furnished, and I realized that it was not
lack of ready money which made the artist so anxious to dispose of the
brute; but he seemed in a desperate hurry to have me take it away, and
offered it for such a low price that I closed the bargain at once. I
suggested sending one of my men for it in the evening, but he insisted
upon my taking it with me, and as the bear was evidently as gentle as a
kitten I called a closed cab and drove away with it. The bear sat
comfortably on the seat beside me and gave no trouble, but as we drove
along I got to thinking the matter over and the whole proceeding seemed
a little strange. I had Mephisto, as the bear was named, put in a cage
well away from the other animals--a sort of quarantine precaution which
I always take with new arrivals--and as there was apparently nothing
unusual about him gave him little attention, there being for the moment
no group of animals in training for which he would be available. I soon
noticed that during the intermissions, when the audience wandered about
and examined the animals in the cages, there was always a crowd of women
about his den; but I thought that it was because he was such an
inveterate beggar, and had a habit of standing at the bars with his
mouth wide open, waiting for some one to flick a lump of sugar into it.

"The bear had given us no trouble, and there was only one peculiar thing
about him: he seemed to have an aversion to cats. The bodies of three of
them had been found in front of his