music preceded a procession of
animal-cages, down Broadway and up the Bowery; Old Adams dressed in his
hunting costume, heading the line, with a platform-wagon on which were
placed three immense grizzly bears, two of which he held by chains,
while he was mounted on the back of the largest grizzly, which stood in
the centre, and was not secured in any manner whatever. This was the
bear known as "General Fremont;" and so docile had he become that Adams
said he had used him as a packbear to carry his cooking and hunting
apparatus through the mountains for six months, and had ridden him
hundreds of miles. But apparently docile as were many of these animals,
there was not one among them that would not occasionally give even Adams
a sly blow or a sly bite when a good chance offered; hence Old Adams was
but a wreck of his former self, and expressed pretty nearly the truth
when he said:

"Mr. Barnum, I am not the man I was five years ago. Then I felt able to
stand the hug of any grizzly living, and was always glad to encounter,
single-handed, any sort of an animal that dared present himself. But I
have been beaten to a jelly, torn almost limb from limb, and nearly
chawed up and spit out by these treacherous grizzly bears. However, I am
good for a few months yet, and by that time I hope we shall gain enough
to make my old woman comfortable, for I have been absent from her some
years."

His wife came from Massachusetts to New York, and nursed him. Dr. Johns
dressed his wounds every day, and not only told Adams he could never
recover, but assured his friends that probably a very few weeks would
lay him in his grave.

But Adams was as firm as adamant and as resolute as a lion. Among the
thousands who saw him dressed in his grotesque hunter's suit, and
witnessed the apparent vigor with which he "performed" the savage
monsters, beating and whipping them into apparently the most perfect
docility, probably not one suspected that this rough, fierce-looking,
powerful demi-savage, as he appeared to be, was suffering intense pain
from his broken skull and fevered system, and that nothing kept him from
stretching himself on his deathbed but that most indomitable and
extraordinary will of his.

After the exhibition had been open six weeks, the Doctor insisted that
Adams should sell out his share in the animals and settle up all his
worldly affairs; for he assured him that he was growing weaker every
day, and his earthly existence must s