GENERAL MARTIN MILLER. 115 



in tights. In early days, when my father's barges brought 

 emigrants up the river to Albany, Jake Driesbach was an 

 emigrant runner for a line of canal boats which took them 

 to Buffalo. He then went to Germany, and returned as 

 "Herr Driesbach, the world-renowned lion tamer." Boys 

 were not wanted in the stables, but as father's business 

 froze up when the river did, and Driesbach came to our 

 house in the long evenings to play chess with father, I 

 had the run of the show, to the envy of the other boys, 

 who could not get in unless I chose to take them. To be 

 on intimate terms with so great a man for a lion tamer 

 is the biggest kind of a man to a small boy was indeed 

 a pleasure unknown to men who were never boys. By 

 that I mean those old fellows who were born "young 

 men" and never had any fun. 



The privilege of seeing these animals at all times was 

 something, but to witness the rehearsals that were neces- 

 sary to keep both men and animals in readiness for the 

 opening performance in the spring was a thing that a 

 real live, full-blooded boy would naturally class as but 

 little below paradise, if he didn't consider it a dozen miles 

 above. As the village constable, Mat Miller walked in 

 the menagerie when he pleased. In fact any reputable 

 citizen could; the line was drawn at boys, who might get 

 hurt or into mischief. There was no steam-heating ap- 

 paratus in those days, and the two elephants, the giraffe 

 (the first one ever in America), the monkeys and other 

 inhabitants of warm countries were in the end where the 

 great stoves were. One day a chained elephant became 

 scared at something; Driesbach said the animal saw a 

 mouse and feared it would go up its trunk. The cage 

 containing the royal Bengal tiger was overturned, and 

 pandemonium, or the Cooper Union after an Anarchist 

 meeting, was a Quaker assembly compared to it. The 



