The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-30 00:00:00

SECRET HISTORY 01, THE STAGE.

(From Wilkes' Spirit of the Times.)
TIPPOO SAM, the celebrated leading performer of Van
Amburgh's. Caravan, is 200 years old, and large in propor-
tion. He 13 a native of Ceylon, and is the largest of his
race in America. • The elephant is not native to Ame-
rica, although McKean Buchanan, whose biography
will be found below, saw him in California in the fall
of 1849. or the spring of Itsso. Tippoo 's dignity and
colossal stature have made him quite popular in the
West, especially in the Western Reserve of Ohio,
where many children have been named after
him. Tippoo once fell through a bridge crossing a small
tributary of the Mississippi, twelve hundred miles from its
mouth, and dropped ou a small boat in which a lady was
fishing for perch. Of course the boat was crushed, but
the laly was not immediately killed; she was, however,
carried away by the current, and drowned before she
reached the mouth of the Father of Waters.
Tippoo Saib is in many respects an elephant of a de-
voted and self-sacrificing disposition. During the war,
having espoused the cause of the South, he was
besieged by an invading army in the fortfied to wn of
Petersburg, Va. Provisions were scarce, mint was dear,
old julep was unknown, and amusements were at a dis-
count—profound gloom pervaded the city. In this emer-
gency an old Virginian gentleman bethought himself of
ye ancient game of Pharaoh. Cards and a lay-
out wore speedily obtained, but chops were not to be
had. On the impulse of the moment Tippoo strode into
the Town Council and magnanimously offered one of his
ivory tusks to be sawed off and turned into whites,
reds, and blues. The offer was gratefully accepted, the
tusk skilfully extracted by an eminent dentist now pulling
in this city, and turned into reds and blues, as the true
Virginian never plays whites; besides, the combination of
colours would have been Yankeeish, and Pete, sburgh
was again indifferent to the horrors of war. It was
on a lofty stack of these same chips that Toni Eans,
the Mobile poet, placed a copper, and turned to read
the pedigrees of 'Fly-by-Night,' when the concus-
sion of Butler's bombarding guns knocked the copper
off, unseen by the abstracted poet, and the pile
was scooped in by the bank on the next turn. It is calcu-
lated that but for this unfortunate event Tom Eans
would have been the richest literary man in America.
As it is, he has never received his full mood of praise,
although he handles the papers with rutarable ability.
Tippo Saib is a canvas-backed elephant in the summer
and a dweller in cities during the winter is tolerably
well-disposed towards the large circle of acquaint-
ances, having killed only eiven keepers in the
course of his placid and ',astersl existence—swain the
Mississippi once at St. Louis, add dammed up the river
so that the levee was completely submerged, and Charley
Eller,' was entirely ruined by the consequent damage to
his cotton, which lay on the bank. Tippoo lives princi
pally on hay, but is not averse to apples, ginger-
bread, tin horns, Stewart's gum-drops, sandwiches,
jujube past', or saleratus biscuit. Knocked a boy's
head off once in Crestline by throwing his trunk at him,
for tempting him with a red apple and ringing in
a. slug of 'Solace tobacco on him. Beans malice a
long time. Got down on George Holland when that
gentleman was aide-de-campto Warren Hastings in India,
and, a century later, when Mr. Barnum imported Tippoo to
this country, the ship touched at Amsterdam for shore re-
freshments, but the implacable monster refused to go on
shore, because he
,was told the country was named after
the gay and thoughtless young dragoon on Hastings'
staff. He is said to have a. very low opinion of Gordon
Cummings, Speke, Burton, and other travellers, and asked
Van Anaburgh once, why it was that African explorers are so
11901933 9t the requirorhouts and dalighte of female society.