A much-coveted annual assignment once came my way, through the kindness of McCloy, I think--the visit to the winter quarters of Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. Every newspaper was invited; the animals were inspected; an article was written; and the circus opened its yearly tour with immense advertisements. In the evening there was a--banquet! I came home in the early hours with my pockets stuffed for Kay and Louis--cigars, fruit, rolls, and all imaginable edibles that might bear the transport. But the occasion is clear for another reason--elephants and rats. The keeper told us that the elephants were terrified of rats because they feared the little beasts would run up their trunks. We doubted his story. He offered to prove it. In the huge barn where some twenty-five monsters stood, chained by the feet against the walls, he emptied a sackful of live rats. The stampede, the trumpeting of those frightened elephants is not easily forgotten. In the centre of the great barn stood masses of hay cut into huge square blocks, and the sight of us climbing for safety to the top of these slippery, precariously balanced piles of hay is not easily forgotten either. The raid at dawn upon a quasi lunatic asylum, kept by an unqualified man, should have left sharper impressions than is the case, for it was certainly dramatic and sinister enough. Word came to the office that a quack “doctor” was keeping a private Home for Lunatics at Amityville, L.I., and that sane people, whom interested parties wished out of the way, were incarcerated among the inmates. The Health Department were going to raid it at dawn. It was to be a “scoop” for the _Evening Sun_, and the assignment was given to me. I started while it was still dark, crossing the deserted ferry long before the sun was up, but when I reached the lonely house, surrounded by fields and a few scattered trees, I found that every newspaper in the city was represented. Even the flimsy men were there, all cursing their fate in the chilly air of early morning. No lights showed in the building. The eastern sky began to flush. With the first glimmer of dawn I saw the sheriff’s men at their various posts, hiding behind trees and hedges, some crouching under the garden shrubberies, some concealed even on the veranda of the house. After a long and weary wait, the house began to stir; shutters were taken down; a window, then a door, were thrown open; figures became visible moving inside from room to room; and presently someone came out on to the veranda. He was instantly seized and taken away. After several men and women had been arrested in this way, a general raid of the whole house took place. A dozen of the sheriff’s men rushed in. The nurses, male and female, the “doctor”-proprietor, his assistants, and every single inmate, sane or crazy, were all caught and brought out under arrest, before they had tasted breakfast.