Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1880-02-20

| Lung JOuis HIS h6cpcI3 uoC0 " ACOp
his money. AS he got his strength
back be got dangerous, and about
ten years after his fall they had to
kill him.
81 saw little Betsy as drunk as a
fiddler one time, aud she was fun
ny sight. We were showing late in
the fall in Indiana, in very severe
weather. Some monkeys, and birds
and snakes had already frozen, and
Betsy shoWned that she was suffer
ing greatly from the cold. Long
John went to Manager Older and
said to him:
"'You'd better get some whisky
for Betsy, or she'll freeze
"'How much?'
"'Her ears are Just beginning to
freeze; get three buckets
"Well, they knew that was two
for Betsy and one for Long John;
but when it came to elephants he
was boss, and the whisky was got,
as he ordered. Only you should
have seen the tavern keepers eyes
stand out when they ordered three
buckeLs of whisky for two drinks.
Betsy drank all they gave her, and
got staving drunk. She'd stagger,
and roll over, and pick herself up,
and pick Long John up and toss him
on her back and sort of laugh, and
he'd laugh, and it was nip and tuck
beween them which was the drunker.
Elephants are very fond of whisky,
or any sort of liquor, especially if it
has lots of red pepper in it; aud they
are not only fond of getting drunk
themselves, but they are very con-
siderate of drunken men. never
yet knew of an elephant hurting a
drunken man. That Long John,
when he was staggering drunk, would
go right up to Sultan or Canada,
when nobody else dared to go near
them, and would fool round them,
and swing ou their tusks, and toss
their trunks about, and go to sleep
right down by their feet, and they
would not only not do him any harm
but would not let anybody else go
near him until he chose to wake up.
Andany real drunken man can do
pretty much what he pleases with an
elephant.
Talking about dangerous elephants,
Cooper & Bailey have one now that is going
to be a terror some day, if he is allowed to
live. His name is Chiettain. He will knock
things down now whenever he can and dares
but is not yet a sufficiently developed devil
to tuSk and kill them afterward. He is
not old enough. saw a desperate fight
with him once in jackson, Mich. BE had
been broken to lie down in the ring, but
suddenly one morning, while his keeper
was rehearsing him, he made up his mind
that he wouldn't lie dowl. He had TO be
broken in at once. There was no other
way. So they took him out to the fair
ground, tripped him, and when they got
him down on his belly, with his legs spread
out so that he couldn't rise, they went to
work beating him with hoop poles, and
clubs, and shovels and anything they could
WELD. They wore out a hundred hoop
poles on him, and were bammeriug on him
steady from half past in the morning un-
til Ain the afternoon. Then he "hollered," "
and after that they had no more trouble
making him lie down. Some people may
think that the elephants hide is so thick
that beating don't hurt him much, but
that is a mistake. 1t is an awful punish
ment for him. The elephants skin is very
sensitive. Flies and mosquitoes will an
noy him almost as much as they would
naked man, and big as he is, he is q very
nervous animal. He isn't afraid to fight
any big beast, but mouse will almost /
throw him into a fit with terror. Let
mouse get to running about the elephant
house at night, and if the keeper does not
run in, in response to their wild trumpet
Jugs of alarm, they will knock the house
down to get out. And when he goes among
them at such a time, they will cluster
around him as close as they can stand to
him, with their trunks waving high in the
air. I imagine there must be some little
beast like a mouse in their own country,
which gets into their trunks when they are
lying down asleep.
II 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 don't think they can get the best !
of. And one of those is the black rhinOce- |
ros. l saw one of those devils set out to |
make mischief in O'Brien's practising |
building in Frankfort, Pa, once. He was |
a double-horned fellow, but they had sawn |
his horns of short, which he hadn't sense |
enough to remember. They billed him for |
seven tons weight, so supposed be must |
have weighed probably three tons, maybe |
more. They were putting 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 q pen opposite the |
door. They backed a cage up against |
the door, ran a rope through it and |
made it fast to a 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 a haWser
you'd tie up 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. Then he gave grunt, |
tossed his head just once, and broke that |
rope. There was a yell, Hes lOoseP and |
those twenty men went over the fences like 1
birds, and some Of them, don't believe, |
stopped before they got to Philadelphia. !
was practising my horses IN the round |
house, Just outside wooden partition from |
where he was, and, when heard that shout, |
ran up stairs to the loft, and looked out |
from door above, where had a full view |
of the whole proceedings. When the rhi- |
nocerous found himself loose he went for |
his natural enemies, the elephants, that |
we're tied upon one side. Empress, the |
oldest COW elephant in the country, 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, dam
aging them so that two Of them died.
Then, when he got them all piled up in a
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, springIng 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 be saw
nothing about them to 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 terrible 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, and was
irving to force her short tusks into MN,
I in NrHNFh a