8 - At The Zoo - Page 2

along faithfully. "Dass what dey all
says. _I_ 'ain't nebber seen it. 'Ain't got time to look at it."

"Well, stop a moment and look," said I. "Isn't it magnificent?"

The blackies stopped and looked.

"Putty good," said Sammy, "but I doan' care fo' views," he added. "Dey
makes me dizzy."

I gave Sammy up from that moment. He was well carved, a work of art,
in fact, but he was essentially modern, and I was living in the
antique.

"Hustle along to the Zoo," I cried, with some impatience, and I was
truly "hustled."

"Here we is," said Sammy, settling down on his haunches at the end of
a five-mile trot. "Dis is it."

We had stopped before a gate not entirely unlike those the Japanese
erect before popular places of amusement they frequent.

I descended from the chair and was greeted by an attendant who
demanded to know what I wished to see.

"The animals," said I.

He laughed. "Well," he said, "I'll show you what I've got, but truly
most of them have gone off on vacation."

"Is the Trojan Horse here?" I demanded.

"No," said he. "He's in the repair shop. One of his girders is loose,
and the hinges on his door rusted and broke last week. His interior
needs painting, and his left hind-leg has been wobbly for a long time.
It was really dangerous to keep him longer without repairs."

I was much disappointed. In visiting the Olympian Zoo I was largely
impelled by a desire to see the Trojan Horse and compare him with the
Coney Island Elephant, which, with the summer hotels of New Jersey and
the Statue of Liberty, at that time dominated the minor natural
glories of the American coast in the eyes of passengers on in-coming
steamships. I think I should even have ventured a ride in his
capacious interior despite what Sammy had said of his friskiness and
the peril of his action to persons susceptible to sea-sickness.

"Too bad," said I, swallowing my disappointment as best I could.
"Still, you have other attractions. How about the Promethean vulture?
Is he still living?"

"Unfortunately, no," said the attendant. "He was taken out last year
and killed. Got too proud to live. He put in a complaint about his
food. Said Prometheus was a very interesting man, but as a diet he was
monotonous and demanded a more diversified _menu_. Said he'd like to
try Apollo and a Muse or two, for a little while, and preferred Cupids
on toast for Sunday-night tea."

"What a vulturian vulture!" said I.

"Wasn't he?" laughed the attendant. "We