We went into the arena and sat down. The ring in the middle was fenced in by a great, circular iron cage. The tiers of seats rose around this, a band was playing in a box over the entrance, and the whole interior was lighted by an electric globe slung over the middle of the cage. Inside a brown bear--to me less suggestive of a wild animal than of lap-robes and furriers’ signs--was dancing sleepily and allowing himself to be prodded by a person whose celluloid standing-collar showed white at the neck above the green of his Tyrolese costume. The bear was mangy, and his steel muzzle had chafed him, and Toppan said he was corrupted of moth and rust alike, and the audience applauded but feebly when he and his keeper withdrew. After this we had a clown-elephant, dressed in a bib and tucker and vast baggy breeches--like those of a particularly big French _Turco_--who had lunch with his keeper, and rang the bell and drank his wine and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief like a bed-quilt, and pulled the chair from underneath his companion, seeming to be amused at it all with a strange sort of suppressed elephantine mirth. And then, after they had both made their bow and gone out, in bounded and tumbled the dogs, barking and grinning all over, jumping up on their stools and benches, wriggling and pushing one another about, giggling and excited like so many kindergarten children on a show day. I am sure they enjoyed their performance as much as the audience did, for they never had to be told what to do, and seemed only too eager for their turn to come. The best of it all was that they were quite unconscious of the audience, and appeared to do their tricks for the sake of the tricks themselves, and not for the applause which followed them. And, then, after the usual programme of wicker cylinders, hoops, and balls was over, they all rushed off amid a furious scrattling of paws and filliping of tails and heels. While this was going on, we had been hearing from time to time a great sound, half-whine, half-rumbling guttural cough, that came from somewhere behind the exit from the cage. It was repeated at rapidly decreasing intervals, and grew lower in pitch until it ended in a short bass grunt. It sounded cruel and menacing, and when at its full volume the wood of the benches under us thrilled and vibrated. There was a little pause in the programme while the arena was cleared and new and much larger and heavier paraphernalia were set about, and a gentleman with well-groomed hair and a very shiny hat entered and announced “the world’s greatest lion-tamer.” Then he went away and the tamer came in and stood expectantly by the side of the entrance. There was another short wait and the band struck a long minor chord.