nd even when
Brad gave sandpaper and glass into the hands of Lothrop Wilson, the
cooper, bidding him smooth and polish the tusks, there was no jealousy:
only a solemn sense that Mr. Wilson had been greatly favored. Brad's
wife sewed together a dark slate-colored cambric, for the elephant's
hide, and wet and wrinkled it, as her husband bade her, for the
shambling shoulders and flanks. It was she who made the ears, from a
pattern cunningly conceived; and she stuffed the legs with fine shavings
brought from the planing-mill at Sudleigh. Then there came an
intoxicating day when the trunk took shape, the glass-bottle eyes were
inserted, and Brad sprung upon a breathless world his one surprise.
Between the creature's fore-legs, he disclosed an opening, saying
meantime to the smallest Crane boy,--

"You crawl up there!"

The Crane boy was not valiant, but he reasoned that it was better to
seek an unguessed fate within the elephant than to refuse immortal
glory. Trembling, he crept into the hole, and was eclipsed.

"Now put your hand up an' grip that rope that's hangin' there,"
commanded Brad. Perhaps he, too, trembled a little. The heart beats fast
when we approach a great fruition.

"Pull it! Easy, now! easy!"

The boy pulled, and the elephant moved his trunk. He stretched it out,
he drew it in. Never was such a miracle before. And Tiverton, drunk with
glory, clapped and shouted until the women-folk clutched their
sunbonnets and ran to see. No situation since the war had ever excited
such ferment. Brad was the hero of his town. But now arose a natural
rivalry, the reaction from great, impersonal joy in noble work. What
lad, on that final day, should ride within the elephant, and move his
trunk? The Crane boy contended passionately that he held the right of
possession. Had he not been selected first? Others wept at home and
argued the case abroad, until it became a common thing to see two young
scions of Tiverton grappling in dusty roadways, or stoning each other
from afar. The public accommodated itself to such spectacles, and
grown-up relatives, when they came upon little sons rolling over and
over, or sitting triumphantly, the one upon another's chest, would only
remark, as they gripped two shirt collars, and dragged the combatants
apart:--

"Now, what do you want to act so for? Brad'll pick out the one he thinks
best. He's got the say."

In vain did mothers argue, at twilight time, when the little dusty legs
in o