The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-04-26
CLAW OF LION MRS. GlLLIGAN SPANKED
 IS WATCH CHARM
Gift of Mir. MLeau to Mir. Lieberum Re. calls the Morning When Bridgeport Had Roast Elephant.

There now hangs upon the watch chain of August Lieberum. the well known undertaken, a gold mounted lions claw, to which a tale attaches famous during it's little day of curren- cy. It is a claw of the lion that Mrs. Christina Gilligan drove away with her broom; thus becoming for few hours a heroine whose name was known be- tween the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, and probably in some foreign countries, so universal is the reign of the press and its network of news conveying wires
 One night in 1888 the fire bells rang They rang again, and then again. The word went round that the Winter Quarters were in flames. Sure enough they were, and strange sights were seen A herd of elephants ran down State street. A rhinocerous run about with a yard or two of flesh burned off one side of him.
 The hoWling of the beasts was frightful. Especially pitiful was the were burned to death in their cages. The firemen did their best, but they cuold not save the big animal house. Presently there occurred the most thrilling incident of the occasion. A big, yellow lion burst out of the anil nal house, frightening everybody all most to a panic. For a moment the creature stood, head erect, position classical under the terms of hunters narrative and photograph. During the moment the crowd broke for cover Some ran. Some climbed to the tops of freight cars. Some mounted fences. A few climbed trees. The firemen They turned a stream of water upon the king of beasts. With the impact of that solid stream the nobility of the animal dropped away from him as his skin afterward did under the knife of the taxidermiSt
 That lion stuck it's noble Numidian tail between it's noble Numidian legs and scooted. It was half dazed and moved from one place to another without apparent object. Then the crowd congregated and members of it, more audacious than the rest, spanked the animal from one crouching place to another, until at last it sprang out of the circle of illumination and disap- peared in the night.
 The next morning, Mrs. Christina Gilligan went to her COW shed in the then outskirts of the city and found a -tyaIloW dog eating her youngest calf. That was what she thought. She took a broom, whacked the dog with great vigor. so that it withdrew its teeth from the quarray and ran. It was not a dog, but the same fierce Numidian lion of the Circus Posters. The un- fortunate creature was afterward shot, and it's raiment of hide, hair and claw was apportioned to those who were fortunate enough to be in at the kill.
 Hence it is that MT. Lieberum wears at his watch fob a claw with a novel history.
 Incidentally besides dead lion, there was roast elephant the next morning. A half dozen of the great brutes were roasted alive in their chains. Among the number was the famous sacred white elephant, worshipped, according to the Posters, by the people of Siam. This was a sort of albino elephant with a dirty grayish hide. It was not sacrosanct to fire, but on the contrary, so thoroughly well done that one or two of the hardy ones cut off strips of it's flesh, in order to say that they had eaten elephant meat and found it good.
 MT Lieberum received the unique gift from Charles Mclean, who for a number of years was an employe of the Big Shows