immense but unmistakable hiccup--a hiccup deep, sincere
and sustained, having a high muzzle velocity and humidly freighted with
an aroma as of a hundred hot mince pies.

From the spellbound crowd rose a concerted gasp of surprise. Chieftain
heeded it not. With the indubitable air of just recalling a pleasant but
novel experience, and filled with a newborn desire to renew the
sensation, he groggily regained his feet and reeled back to the corner
from whence he had come. Here, with the other properties of his act, a
slickly painted blue barrel stood upended. Applying his nose to a spot
at the base of it, he lapped greedily at a darkish aromatic liquid
which, as the entranced watchers now were aware, oozed forth in a stream
upon the cage floor through a cranny treacherously opened between two
sprung staves. And all the while he tongued up the escaping runlet of
fluid he purred and rumbled joyously and his tawny sides heaved and
little tremors of pure ecstasy ran lengthwise through him to expire
diminishingly in lesser wriggles at the tufted tip of his gently
flapping tail.

Then all at once understanding descended upon the audience, and from
them together rose a tremendous whoop. A joyous whoop it was, yet tinged
with a feather edging of jealous regret on the part of certain adult
whoopers there. They had paid their quarters, these worthy folk, to see
a lion perform certain tricks and antics; and lo, they had been
vouchsafed the infinitely more unique spectacle of a lion with a jag
on! It was a boon such as comes but once in many lifetimes, this
opportunity to behold majestic Leo, converted into a confirmed inebriate
by his first indulgence in strong and forbidden waters, returning to his
tippling.

To some perhaps in this land of ours the scene would have served to
point a moral and provide a text--a lamentable picture of the evils of
intemperance as exemplified in its effects upon a mere unreasoning dumb
brute. But in this assemblage were few or none holding the higher view.
Unthoughtedly they yelled their appreciation, yelling all the louder
when Chieftain, having copiously refreshed himself, upreared upon his
hind legs, with both his forepaws winnowing the perfumed air, and after
executing several steps of a patently impromptu dance movement, tumbled
with a happy, intoxicated gurgle flat upon his back and lapsed into a
coma of total insensibility.

But there was one among them who did not cheer. This one was a
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