The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-10-15
The sIMIAN's REVENGE.
Mr.. Hardy Tells of His Ohum's Expert
ences With a Giant Anthropoid.

Il sec that Barnum has lost his big pet
gorilla Chico" said George Hardy, an old
travelling man for a New York paper
house. 1T reminds me-" he continued, of
a very grewsome adventure l had with
one of the beasts over in Liverpool a
number of years ago, and if the same fell
low were living now he would more than
replace Chico, for he was a half bigger.
and as strong-well, 1t would be hard to
calculate his strength, but give him a
knotted rope and brace for his feet and
he could output any three men in the
warehouse where l met him. But he is not
living now. He died very suddenly.
1T was down on the old east dock
where many of the big East Indiamen
used to come in. l was a young fellow
then, just starting in business, and jun
ior clerk for one of the big paper ware e
houses there. One of the firm was great
friends with the captain of a big India
liner and on one of the home voyages
the captain brought back big gorilla
that he had picked up at some port on
the way. He gave him to our boss, and as
Mr.. Boulder did not have any room for
'Gooro'-that was what they called him
in his own house, they left him down at
the paper warehouse, where he was
chained in the engine room, principally
because it was hot down there.
He had a nasty temper when they first
got him, so that there were very few peo-
pie who could handle him, but after he
had been in the house for nearly a year
he seemed to get used to his surround
ings, so that he was given the liberty of
nearly the whole establishment, and
some of us younger fellows struck up
quite an intimacy with him, sharing our
luncheon with him at noon and treat
ing him pretty much as one of us, for he
smoked and drank, and did everything
but swear in English. He could swear
1uently enough in his own tongue when
he got mad. He would get mad occa-
sionally when any of the boys leased him,
and would wait a month if necessary to
find chance to get even. And he would
not stop at anything in the way of a
mean turn to a man he dislked, from up
setting a bucket of engine grease on his
| head to turning steam jet on him. which
last he did to the engineer once and nearly
parbOiled him.
But We put up with these little eccen-
| tricities for the sake of having such a
strange pet about, and everything went
all right until Ned Hanlan, my particular
chum If the store, put a big lump of
shoemaker's wax down on the seat
where Gooro was in the habit of sitting
and glued him down. He nearly tore the
| place up, and we had to fairly cut him
! loose with hammer and cold chisel Ned
| kept shy of him for some days. and VIC
| thought the affair had blown over. But
we did not know Gooro's capacity for
! harboring a grudge.
There was big paper cutting ma
chine in the warehouse, such as you can
find in almost any big, paper store, only a
larger one than usual 1t had a six-foot
knife like a gullotine, that Travelled up
and down in grooves with a big fly wheel
attachment and multiplying gear that
gave force to it's stroke so that it would
cut through pile of paper two feet thick
| like slicing cheese.
''We had taught Gooro to run this ma
chine, and used to make use of him often,
saving ourselves a good deal of work by
putting him up on the iron table and let
ting him twist the cutting wheel while
ono Of us arranged the piles of paper on
the table below. He used to enjoy It. and
got so that he would twist the wheel like
steam engine, gurgling and chattering
| like Sandwich Islander, and raising or
lowering the knife as we told him
lone evening we had a lot of big six
foot manila paper to cut, just about as
big as the machine would take and as il
was long job Ned and ! stayed after the
rest of the force went home to finish 1t
up. We let Gooro work the wheel and got
along beautifully. We had nearly finished
the job when we ran out of tobacco and
Ned told me to run up and look in his
desk, where | would find some We were
down in the basement and it was rather
long trip up to the front office, and when
l got there 1 found some odd work on my
desk to put away, so that / must have
been gone nearly quarter of an hour.
when / came back l paused at the
| basement door, and you can imagine my
surprise to see Ned stretched out across
the table of the cutting machine, pinned
down by the knife and the big ape dane
ing around him and occasionally running
over to pinch him or pull his hair or turn
the wheel and tighten down the knife a
trihe. 1t was an awful scene.
Ned told me afterward how 1t hap
pened. He had been changing the set OF
the gauge on the cutting table, and, after
loosening UP the screws on the side where
he was standing. had thrown himself
across, without thinking, under the blade
of the knife TO loosen those on the OPP
posite side. That was apparently Just
what Gooro had been looking for, and he
spun the wheel around and caught
Ned with the knife right across the back.
The ape could have cut him in two Just
as easy as not, and he doubtless, would
have done 1t before he got through, but
he seemed to want some fun out of the
performance first, and sat down on the