o allow the herd to pass over. That would give the Barnum people
a chance to say that Jumbo was so big that the authorities of the bridge
were afraid to let him cross the structure, and the circus people forsaw
a splendid advertisement.

Mr. Martin wasn't to be caught napping, and he was on hand when the
herd approached. The man in charge offered to pay for crossing, but Mr.
Martin said there was no charge for elephants, and that the man could
take them over at his own risk. Mr. Martin stipulated that the elephants
should be kept at regular intervals. But when the animals got out on the
roadway, a train passing over frightened them, and, with Jumbo to lead
them, they gathered in a group and trumpeted fiercely. Finally the
keepers got them to go on, but they were so timid that they crowded each
other all the way over. Mr. Martin ran out to the centre to watch the
effect on the slip joint, and found that the weight amounted to nothing.
Ever since that day elephants by the hundred would not cause the bridge
officials any concern. Mr. Barnum's elephants got over in safety, but
there was no Jumbo advertisement to be had out of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Chief Engineer Martin of the bridge once said to me, when I asked him if
he could not tell me some of the interesting things about it that
usually escaped the ordinary observer:

"There isn't much to be said. The bridge is a very prosaic thing."

I have no doubt it is to Mr. Martin. He concerns himself with abstract
mathematical formulas a good deal. He knows about the tangents and sines
and cosines and curves and strains and all that, which some of us
grown-up people studied about in college, and have been glad to forget
in our humdrum lives since. When I asked Mr. Martin, however, if he knew
where Cobweb Lane was, he smiled, and said he didn't. He showed in that
way that the bridge was a very prosaic thing to him; but I am sure that
if you take no thought of mathematics, and look for the beautiful and
interesting things about the bridge, you will be convinced that the
bridge is not prosaic after all. A visit to Cobweb Lane will prove it.

THE WESTBRIDGE BURGLAR ALARM.

BY WILLIAM DRYSDALE.

"I wonder we didn't think of it long ago. Why, we can sit in our rooms
and talk to each other as well as if we were together. The whole outfit
won't cost us more than fifteen dollars."

Tom Dailey began to drum telegraphic dots and dashes on the table with
the ends of his fing