On the morning of opening, a band of music preceded a procession of animal cages down Broadway and up the Bowery, old Adams, dressed in his hunting costume, heading the line, with a platform wagon on which were placed three immense grizzly bears, two of which he held by chains, while he was mounted on the back of the largest grizzly, which stood in the centre and was not secured in any manner whatever. This was the bear known as "General Fremont," and so docile had he become that Adams said he had used him as a pack-bear, to carry his cooking and hunting apparatus through the mountains for six months, and had ridden him hundreds of miles. But apparently docile as were many of these animals, there was not one among them that would not occasionally give Adams a sly blow or a sly bite when a good chance offered; hence old Adams was but a wreck of his former self, and expressed pretty nearly the truth when he said: "Mr. Barnum, I am not the man I was five years ago. Then I felt able to stand the hug of any grizzly living, and was always glad to encounter, single handed, any sort of an animal that dared present himself. But I have been beaten to a jelly, torn almost limb from limb, and nearly chawed up and spit out by these treacherous grizzly bears. However, I am good for a few months yet, and by that time I hope we shall gain enough to make my old woman comfortable, for I have been absent from her some years." His wife came from Massachusetts to New York and nursed him. Dr. Johns dressed his wounds every day, and not only told Adams he could never recover, but assured his friends that probably a very few weeks would lay him in his grave. But Adams was as firm as adamant and as resolute as a lion. Among the thousands who saw him dressed in his grotesque hunter's suit, and witnessed the seeming vigor with which he "performed" the savage monsters, beating and whipping them into apparently the most perfect docility, probably not one suspected that this rough, fierce-looking, powerful semi-savage, as he appeared to be, was suffering intense pain from his broken skull and fevered system, and that nothing kept him from stretching himself on his death-bed but his most indomitable and extraordinary will. Adams was an inveterate story-teller, and often "drew the long bow" with daring hand. He loved to astonish people with extraordinary tales, which were sheer inventions, but which no one could disprove. He pretended, too, to have been everywhere and to have seen everything. This weakness made him good game for Barnum, who determined to expose his foibles to him at the first opportunity. The opportunity soon came. One day, amid the innumerable caravan of cranks that moved to the weird realm of Barnum's wonder-house, there appeared a fat, stolid German, carrying in his hand a small basket, which he guarded with jealous care. "I have come," he said, "to see if you would not like some golden pigeons to buy?"