Stories About Elephants.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 444, 8 February 1890, Page 3

Stories About Elephants.

So one of Barnum’s elephants has killed his keeper.' The wonder is, considering what captive elephants have to go through, that more calamities of this kind do noo happen. Elephants are invariably held up to the youthful mind as patterns of all the virtues. I have in my youthful days cried myself to sleep over the woes of the good, kind elephant who was pricked by the wicked tailor; and I have grinned with frantic delight at the way in which, after a lapse of years, the good, kind animal paid out the w’icked snip; but since I have grown to man’s estate I have learned to know the elephant as he is, and not as he is portrayed in the goody-goody books of my youth. The elephant is an animal with four legs, a trunk, two tusks, a pair of deep-set eyes, and a tail. He is supposed to be goodtempered, but he can be werry nathty when he likes, and he, as a rule,'is oftener “ nathty ” than nice. It is a way he has. An elephant only respects a man when he fears his power. In India the native keeper’s first endeavour is to make his charge fear him ; this accomplished, he knows he can do what he likes with him. At a certain period, when the male elephant labours under the influence of domestic disquiet, the Indian keeper chains him up in such a manner that it is impossible for him to break loose. This done, he proceeds to annoy him by running a piece of cotton down a long pole beneath his very nose. The elephant makes a dash at the cloth, which is adroitly withdrawn, and, failing to grasp it, stamps and cusses in a most excited manner. This is repeated several times until Mr Elephant is tired out, and impressed with the belief that the keeper is his superior. All this talk about an elephant’s love for his keeper is so much utter nonsense; an elephant either hates his keeper or he fears him. If the former, he will do for him at the first favourable opportunity; if the latter, he will in all probability do his bidding as long as the sense of fear possesses him. As with elephants so it is with human beings. The vast majority of mankind don’t respect you until they fear you. Ruling by love and love alone is impossible, outside of Sunday-school books. I have tried it, and have more than once come to grief. The drawers in my desk are full to overflowing with I O U’s of folk whom I have tried to rule through love.