A RARE FRIGHT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1789, 13 September 1888, Page 4

A RARE FRIGHT.

When Mr Thomas Toudan kept the Surrey Music Hall, Westbar, he had in his employment an eccentric named Tom Smithers, popularly known as " Legs," the reason being that his understandings were bowed like a capital O. " Legs " was engaged as attendant on the menagerie attached to a music hall, and was a faithful, hard-working fellow, with but one drawback—he was a little too fond of whisky. With a view to keeping him sober, he had strict orders not to leave the premises after closing time on any account; but one evening his master heard his gentle footsteps sneak up the stair-case from the vaults where the animals' dens were kept, saw him noislessly unfasten a side door and let himself out. " I will teach you a lesson, my lad," thought Toudan. Consequently he stole downstairs into the first large room, where the bears were kept, and waited patiently for the return of " Legs" with the liquor he had gone out to fetch. Xoudan's idea was to scare him to death by way of a caution, but somehow the scheme went wrong. He had no sooner locked the door than he became conscious, in the dim light of the turned-down gas burner, that a large black something was shifting uneasily about in a corner of the apartment. Presently the something got up and shook itself, and commenced sniffing around in his direc tion. Closer inspection revealed that it was two large bears, male and female, which had somehow got out of their cage. As Youdan remembered they wer« the most savage of his stock, he felt the hair rise up on his head like a birch broom, and the cold perspiration went trickliug down his back. The bears slowly approached him, the little piggish eyes glittering like yellow fire as they came nearer, and he entered upon a stage of deadly fright that cannot be described, even when you have felt it. Sudenlj he bethought himself that their cage was jast at his elbow. He leaped for their cage, got inside, and slammed the door, and succeeded in partly bolting it, the bears sniffing at his hands as he did it. Then Mr and Mrs Bruin lost their temper and went for the bars with might and main. They growled and snorted, and shook the iron rods as if they would rend them to pieces, while Toudan curled himself up small in the remotest corner of the den and yelled fifteen different kinds of " Murder! " This went on half an hour before •' Legs" arrived to find the door locked and a terrible racket going on inside, in the midst of which he could hear his governor screaming for all the powers of Heaven and the other place to come and help him. Though he was afraid the bears would get the cage open, " Legs " soon had his plan arranged. He forced the door, and, dashing in with a flaming torch in one hand and a bucket of bears' food in the other, by a judicious mixture of persuasion and fright, he got the animals into an empty cage and secured them. Then he turned his attention to his master and let him out more dead than alive. Toudan's hair was gray from that moment, and it was not long after that the menagerie was sold off.