costumes, walking up
and down.

There were brown men, yellow men, red men, black men, big men,
little men, thin men, fat men, lame men, deformed men, men with
goitres, men covered with feathers, men covered with fur,--in
fact, men of every possible kind, size, and land,--men to suit
every possible taste.

All the most curious specimens were represented. Besides these
there was a colossal menagerie. In it there were more than twenty
elephants, giraffes, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, zebras,
dromedaries, camels, and the rarest kinds of antelopes. Then came
the reptiles,--from the boa constrictor, who was ten yards long,
to the smallest blind-worm, amongst them some of the most
dangerous kinds. Crocodiles twenty feet long, monstrous toads,
tortoises as big as donkeys. Then there were the wild beasts too.
Lions from Abyssinia, from Atlas, tigers from Bengal, from Persia,
jaguars, panthers, leopards, all the big cat family, lynx, onca,
tiger cat. Bears of all kinds, grizzly, grey, black, and white.
Then came wolves, foxes, coyotes, in fact the whole series of the
dog tribe with every possible domestic variety.

In little barred cages was a collection of smaller carnivorous
animals and rodents. In a huge room all the monkeys from the big
gorilla to the minute ouistiti or witsit, were installed; they
squabbled, pulled one another's tails, bit one another, uttered
piercing cries. There were constant battles going on in that
corner.

Then in an immense aviary were all the birds of creation, divided
into classes, from the humming-bird, the size of a hornet, to the
ostrich. This was, to tell the truth, the part that interested
Mother Etienne most of all. She was more used to creatures of this
kind, they reminded her of her beloved poultry-yard. In spite of
the signs put up everywhere, "Do not feed the animals," the good
woman who had purposely filled her basket with cakes threw them in
indiscriminately. There were enough for all the animals she
passed. First she threw some to the lions. The lions took no
notice, at which she was most surprised. Her idea in offering the
cakes was to see if the animals were hungry and to find out that
way how they were treated.

Miss Booum, who was acting as her guide, was much amused at her
astonishment and could not resist saying:

"Madame, to offer a cream bun to a tiger is like offering a
beef-steak to an elephant. Just keep your cakes for the ostriches,
they are so greedy that they will