The Newtown bee., 1880-02-18
A RHINOCEROS IN A RAGE.
Breaking Away from Twenty Men and
 ThrashinR Fear Elephants.

Breaking Away from Twenty Men and
 Thrashing Four Elephants.
 Frank Melville, the circus performer, during an interesting conversation with q New York reporter on performing ele- plants said among other things: I said elephants would fight any other big
 beast, and so they will, but there are some that they don't want any trouble with and that l don't think they can get the best of. And one of those is the
 black rhinoceros. I saw one of those
 hrutes set out to make mischief in O'Brieu's practicing building in Frank fort, Pa., once. He was a double-horned fellow, but they had sawn his horns off short, which he hadn't sense enough to remember. They billed him for seven tons weight, and so I suppose that he must have weighed probably three tons, may be more. They were getting the animals into wagon cages, preparatory
 to starting out in the spring, and when they came to that black rhinoceros the trouble began. He was in pen oppo- site the door. They backed cage up against the door, ran a rope through it and made it fast to ring in his nose. On the other end of the rope twenty men hung on to hold him if he tried to make a break. And the rope was like q hawser you'd tie up a steamboat with They put potatoes in line across from the door of his pen to the sloping boards that went up to the cage door, and to that point coaXed him along all right There he gave a grunt, tossed his head just once, and broke that rope. There was yell outside. "He's loosem and those twenty men went over the fences like birds, and some of them I don't be- lieve stopped before they got to Phila- delphia. I was practicing my horses in the round house, just outside wooden partition from where he was, and, when heard that shout, ran upstairs to the loft, and looked out from a door above, where I had full view of the whole proceedings. When the rhinoceros found himself loose he went for his natural enemies, the elephants, that were tied upon one side. Empress, the oldest COW elephant in the coun- try, was among them. She was an Asiatic elephant, with short, feeble tusks. First the black brute went for the four small elephants over in one corner, and tossed them about, drove his nose under them, heaved them up in the air, and trampled on them, damaging them so that two of them died. Then, when he got them all piled up in heap, he made a rush in another direction. A tiger cage stood in his way, and he tossed that up. As it came down it broke, and the tiger spring ing out landed On his back, With one dash he caught the tiger against the. wall and killed him. Then he upset several other cages, but fortunately none of the animals got out, and as he saw nothing about them tes kill he passed on. Next he charged on old Empress. He would plunge in under her belly, and then pull himself out backward, showing that he was doing his best to cut her open with his terri ble horns, which he forgot had been sawed off. She was tied so that she couldn't escape, and was screaming for help. After little she got him down, into him, when Cooley, the keeper, came in with a short hatchet in his hand. When she saw him she let the rhinoc- eros get up, no doubt supposing the keeper would soon take care of him. But as quick as flash that brute, as soon as he was on his feet, made rush for Cooley so suddenly that the man had not time to jump aside, so was caught up on his nose, and with him there the beast made 8 dive for the wall sheer good luck the rhinoceros' nose was pointed straight for a little door, so in- stead of Cooley being mashed flat against the wall he was shot through into the stable as if he had been fired out of gun. Luckily the door was too narrow for the rhinoceros to get through, but he kept trying it until Cooley picked himself up, ran back at him with the axe and gave him two cuts over the eyes that blinded his sight with blood. Then the keeper darted in be- hind him by another door and ran to the rhinoceros' pen. Blind as he was, the brute followed, by either sound or scent, so closely as almost to catch him, and plunged into the pen, where he wa again secured. Big as he was, that black rhinoceros was as nimble as cat It would make your hair stand up to see the power and the quickness of the beast.