m A PROFITABLE HUNTING TRIP. 



face, the mollycoddle, and my policies, it has been the general 

 ooinion that there existed nowhere upon earth an intelligence so 

 toi'pid that the name and fame of the great American Nimrod had 

 not penetrated it. It was thought that the man of the loud noise 

 and the big stick had registered an impression upon every living 

 being with the nervous system of an oyster. 



But let the astonishing fact be here recorded that for the first 

 time the waves of Roosevelt energy beat upon the perception of a 

 very live and highly complicated group of creatures, and, as usual, 



those waves made them turn about w ith a jerk and take a more than 

 casual notice. 



This aggregation of creatures with the queer names and 

 insular intelligence had some excuse for not having heard of the 

 mighty one, for they have lived their recent lives in exile. There 

 is no doubt whatever that they spent a busy time gathering in 

 Roosevelt information from the cage next to theirs, or just across 

 the way. 



APPRISED BY A LOUD NOISE. 



It was the loud noise, sure enough, which first apprised these 

 tardy intelligences of the existence of one Roosevelt. They were 

 all of them browsing or ruminating over the creamy cud of mid- 

 afternoon in the antelope house at the Zoological Gardens, when 

 their keen ears detected sounds of unusual excitement outside the 

 walls of their home. Then they heard doors bang open, bolts fall, 

 men shouting and straining under heavy burdens, sliding doors 

 lifted, and the patter of strange hoofs on the floor of their abode. 



There certainly was a ruction while the nevv' beasts were being 

 transferred to their cages in the antelope house. Superintendent 

 Carson, of the Gardens, worked hard to take the best care of the 

 late arrivals from Africa, but the}- simply would not behave. They 

 cut up many pranks in the surroundings which were so strange to 

 them. They were all of them hoofed animals, and the time which 

 they spent at the Gardens at Philadelphia was due to the fact that 

 they had been quarantined, as all hoofed animals are, in order to 

 test their freedom from animal diseases. 



