22 TRAPPING WILD ANIMALS 



told him I could start the following Wednesday, 

 July third. He asked me to see what connections 

 I could make, to secure my passage for the following 

 Wednesday and find out the shortest possible time I 

 could make Bombay. 



Can my readers form an idea what an Asiatic 

 elephant fourteen to fourteen and a half feet high, 

 and probably weighing from seven to eight tons, 

 would mean to a circus like the Barnum and Bailey 

 Show? What a drawing power it would be! It 

 would mean a million or more. No keener or more 

 wonderful manager than Mr. Bailey lived, but, like 

 many others, was often misled by wonderful tales 

 of strange things. Immense amounts of money 

 were spent in searching for and trying to secure 

 freaks and abnormal animals that never existed 

 outside the minds of the showmen's informants. 



As I said, money was no object. Get it! That 

 was all there was to it. "Go get it!" sounds easy, 

 eh? 



After looking up the sailings from London to 

 Bombay, I saw that one of the P. & O. steamers 

 leaving London on the fourth day of July was due 

 in Bombay on the twenty-eighth day of that month, 

 and told Mr. Bailey that if I left New York on the 

 third of July, with luck, I would be in Bombay on 

 the twenty-eighth. 



"Can you make it, Mayer ? By gosh, that's good 

 time, but how are you going to do it ? You have got 

 to go to London first." 



