d
accept peace offerings from my hand, taking bits of sugar with care not
to include my fingers, but would tolerate no petting. Within certain
limits he would acknowledge an authority which had been made real to
him by chains and imprisonment, and reluctantly suspend an intended
blow and retreat to a corner when insistently commanded, yet the fires
of rebellion never were extinguished and it would have been foolhardy
to get within effective reach of his paw. To strangers he was
irreconcilable and unapproachable.

Monarch passed three or four years in a steel cell before he was taken
to the Park. He devoted a week or so to trying to get out and testing
every bar and joint of his prison, and when he realized that his
strength was over-matched, he broke down and sobbed. That was the
critical point, and had he not been treated tactfully by Louis Ohnimus,
doubtless the big Grizzly would have died of nervous collapse. A live
fowl was put before him after he had refused food and disdained to
notice efforts to attract his attention, and the old instinct to kill
was aroused in him. His dulled eyes gleamed green, a swift clutching
stroke of the paw secured the fowl. Monarch bolted the dainty morsel,
feathers and all, and his interest in life was renewed with the revival
of his savage propensity to slay.

From that moment he accepted the situation and made the best of it. He
was provided with a bed of shavings, and he soon learned the routine of
his keeper's work in removing the bed. Monarch would not permit the
keeper to remove a single shaving from the cage if a fresh supply was
not in sight. He would gather all the bedding in a pile, lie upon it
and guard every shred jealously, striking and smashing any implement of
wood or iron thrust into the cage to filch his treasure. But when a
sackful of fresh shavings was placed where he could see it, Monarch
voluntarily left his bed, went to another part of the cage and watched
the removal of the pile without interfering.

In intelligence and quickness of comprehension, the Grizzly was
superior to other animals in the zoological garden and compared not
unfavorably with a bright dog. It could not be said of him, as of most
other animals, that man's mastery of him was due to his failure to
realize his own power. He knew his own strength and how to apply it,
and only the superior strength of iron and steel kept him from doing
all the damage of which he was capable.

The l