he outside of every thing: we determined to go
and see the inside. First we went into Richardson's, where we saw a
bloody tragedy, with a ghost and thunder, and afterwards a pantomime,
full of tricks, and tumbling over one another. Then we saw one or
two other things, I forget which, but this I know, that generally
speaking, the outside was better than the inside. After this, feeling
very hungry, we agreed to go into a booth and have something to eat.
The tables were ranged all around, and in the centre there was a
boarded platform for dancing. The ladies were there already dressed
for partners; and the music was so lively, that I felt very much
inclined to dance, but we had agreed to go and see the wild beasts fed
at Mr. Polito's menagerie, and as it was now almost eight o'clock, we
paid our bill and set off. It was a very curious sight, and better
worth seeing than any thing in the fair; I never had an idea that
there were so many strange animals in existence. They were all secured
in iron cages, and a large chandelier, with twenty lights, hung in the
centre of the booth, and lighted them up, while the keeper went round
and stirred them up with his long pole; at the same time he gave us
their histories, which were very interesting. I recollect a few of
them. There was the tapir, a great pig with a long nose, a variety of
the hiptostomass, which the keeper said was an amphibious animal, as
couldn't live on land, and _dies_ in the water--however, it seemed to
live very well in a cage. Then there was the kangaroo with its young
ones peeping out of it--a most astonishing animal. The keeper said
that it brought forth two young ones at a birth, and then took them
into its stomach again, until they arrived at years of discretion.
Then there was the pelican of the wilderness, (I shall not forget
him,) with a large bag under his throat, which the man put on his head
as a night-cap; this bird feeds its young with its own blood--when
fish are scarce. And there was the laughing hyaena, who cries in the
wood like a human being in distress, and devours those who come to his
assistance--a sad instance of the depravity of human nature, as the
keeper observed. There was a beautiful creature, the royal Bengal
tiger, only three years old, what growed ten inches every year, and
never arrived at its full growth. The one we saw measured, as the
keeper told us, sixteen feet from the snout to the tail, and seventeen
feet from the tail to the