A Little Girl of Long Ago

p>There came to New York in May a menagerie. A chance like this roused the children to a pitch of the wildest enthusiasm. Wonderful posters were put up. It was not considered a circus at all, but a moral and instructive show, if it did not have delightful Artemas Ward to expatiate upon it. There were a great many children who had never seen an elephant. Hanny Underhill had not.

Jim said, "There was a live lion stuffed with straw; a zebra that had fifty stripes from the tip of his nose to his tail, nary stripe alike; a laughing hyena of the desert, who could cry like a child when he was hungry, and who devoured the people who came to his assistance, thereby showing the total depravity of human nature; an elephant that could dance; and monkeys who climbed the highest trees and swung in the gentle zephyrs by the tail." The crowning point was that he had money enough saved up to go.

The celebrated lion-tamer, a Mr. Van Amburgh, was to perform with some trained animals. Oh, what a crowd there was!--m