The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-09-22
REFORMED BY AN ELEPHANT.
ExcAAnre.

Exchange.
 One of the strangest stories of & drunkard's reformation is told in the Philadelphia Times. William H., & prosperous tradesman of eastern Pennsy ylvania, lost his property through unforeseen business troubles, and, leaving his young family, went west to retrieve his fortune; but, dis couraged by want of success, he took to drink, and finally became degrad- ed loafer. He drifted eastward again, and was seen in Troy, N. Y., hanging around liquor saloons. He had lost his manhood, and even his very name (having long been ashamed to be called by iD, and men knew him as "The Worm of the Still" Once, soon after the arrival ot cir GUS and mensgerie combination to ex- hibit in the city, the drunksrd saw one of the keepers purchase a pailfGl of whisky for a sick elephant, and sneaked after him to the circus tent, following the impulse of his raging thirst.
 The keeper put the bucket of whis- ky down before Betsy" the sick ele- phant, and she drank about half of 1t. The intelligent brute knew 1t was medicine, and did not propose to take more of it than she thought she need ed. The hucket, still half full of liq- uor, was left standing near her, and the keepers attention was called away for moment.
 Hardly was his back turned when & bloated, red face was poked through under the canvas, and its pair of watery eyes were fastened greedily upon the bucket. Betsy fixed her keen little eyes on the intruder, stopped swaying to and fro, and wait ed to see what he would do.
 He did not notice her. The fascina- ton of the whisky blinded him to everything else. The bucket was be- yond his reach. He drew himself under the tent until he could clutch it. The instant that he did 30, Betsy flung her powerful trunk around his waist, and whirled him up in the air.
 She did not mean him any harm, but he was tampering with her medi- cine, and she would not stand that. So he had barely time to give one wild shriek of terror, when she tossed him thirty feet away, where he struck against one of the ponderous wheels of lion cage, and fell to the earth with one leg broken, and three fractured ribs. She did not attempt to follow and hurt him, for she had no malice He was carried away on stretcher to hospital.
 The rest of the story is a pathetic romance. The wretched mans recov- cry was so slow that fifteen weeks passed before he could walk on crutches; but ill that long time the thorough hospital treatment had cleansed all the liquor out of him, and he had begun to look something like his former self.
 One day, when party of ladies vis- ited the hospital, distributing flowers and reading matter 10 the patients, one of them, handsome bat sad faced young woman, stopped by his chair, and gazed at him Us If strangely startled.
 "father," she said, lyon do not re- member me. l am your daughter Mary"
 It was twelve years since she had seen him, but she knew him.
 She had him conveyed to her home as soon as possible, where, in time, he was restored to health, found good employment, and began new life of sobriety and industry, which continued to the last.
 His adventure with the elephant, SO nearly fatal to him, proved the means of his entire reformation.