CHAPTER IV.

JUMBO’S BUSY LIFE AT THE ZOÖLOGICAL GARDENS, AND HIS LOVE FOR LITTLE CHILDREN.

Jumbo has had a busy life. I would tell my young readers that, as Mrs. General Garfield once said, “a busy life is the happiest.” That good and noble lady once wrote to our late worthy President, and told him her happiest thoughts came to her when she was busy “baking the nice white bread” and thinking of her dear noble husband, who was also busy “all the way through,” from the time he drove the boat horse on the canal bank, up to the time he embraced his good old mother in the presence of thousands of his country’s representatives at Washington, during the scene of his inauguration.

Jumbo, I say, has been a busy, industrious creature all his life, especially since I brought him from his sick bed. He is like many a noble-minded man, who has been stricken down with sickness and raised up again, like old Job, to bless and magnify his creator. Jumbo has had no idle days for “loafing” or hanging around stores or otherwise wasting his time. He has been engaged in carrying around the children of the human family almost daily for twenty years, and I suppose no animal has ever carried so many on his back as Jumbo. Certainly I can claim for him that no animal ever did his work more affectionately or tenderly, and freer from accident.

Once when I was riding him around in the Zoölogical Gardens, in London, sitting on his neck, with about a dozen children on a panier-saddle across his broad back, we were proceeding down the path. It was on a delightful summer afternoon, and the grass plots, flowers, plants, and trees, which abound in those magnificent gardens, looked beautiful. I was engaged talking to the dozen “little folk” who occupied his back, and encouraging them to sit very quietly and not fall off, when all at once Master Jumbo came to a standstill for some cause or other. I shouted to him to go along, but for once he did not obey the order. As I turned round to see what was the matter, there was a lady running over the grass-plot on to the path, screaming and shouting, “Oh, my poor child! my child, my child! oh, he will be killed, he will be killed!” Well, I looked down from my elevation and saw Jumbo deliberately and coolly putting his trunk around the body of an infant that escaped its mother’s apron-strings and had run and fallen in front of Jumbo. Jumbo is a very careful walker, and always looks where he is going, and, like some others of God’s creatures, is rather slow in his movements, but both very sure footed and thoughtful. He just stopped right there, gently picked up the child by the waist with his trunk, and laid it on the green grass beside its screaming mother, more tenderly than the mother afterward took up the frightened child in her excitement.

Jumbo never gets excited when he is attending to children. He might get mad once in a while, when some drunken fool tries to prick him with pins stuck in a cake, or otherwise fool him. Jumbo always knows parties that try to play tricks upon him when he is being exhibited to the masses of humanity, and if ever any of such parties should come within the reach of Jumbo a second time it wouldn’t be good for him. A woman would not do a dirty trick to Jumbo.

Now, my dear young boys, let me tell you that Jumbo was only ten years old at this time, and I want you to see right here the great lesson taught by Jumbo in this tender action: to always be kind, loving, and helpful to your little sisters when you see them fall down or hurt themselves, and, if you learn to carry this into practice, this trivial incident of God’s wisdom, through one of his creatures, will be a blessed and profitable habit all through life, and your friend and Jumbo will be fully rewarded.

I want you to think of Jumbo as a kind, affectionate creature; never mind his being an awkward, overgrown “old boy”; don’t look at the exterior so much. “Fine feathers make fine birds,” is an old saying, but remember, when you see a little girl anyway in trouble, you should go instantly to the rescue, and remember that poor Jumbo did the same thing.