Circus owners are vainly searching the jungles of India and the wilds of Africa for rhinoceroses. There are none in the open markets and the world’s visible supply is limited to twelve specimens. The market value of the beast ranged from $4,000 to $5,000 until the present shortage set in. Now a large circus would willingly pay many times that sum. The rhinoceros has always been a problem to animal keepers, for captivity generally results in early death. He is a beast so essentially of the wilds that all efforts at breeding in captivity have failed. Old showmen remember the attempt to take performing liberties with one of the spike-nosed monsters in a small town in Illinois in 1872. He killed two men, upset four dens of animals, tore down a museum tent, stampeded people for blocks and finally brought up in a vacant house, the door of which stood open. No fixed desire to exhibit a rhinoceros has ever since been displayed. To many persons who go to a circus there is probably nothing that causes more wonder than to see the keepers of the lions, tigers, leopards, panthers and other wild beasts sitting in the cages among them, patting them on their ugly heads, slapping them on their saliva-dripping jowls, or fearlessly lashing them with their whips if necessary. Mastery expresses better than training what the keepers have accomplished with the beasts. “There is a tremendous amount of work to be done in winter quarters, of which the public knows nothing,” explained our keeper, as he surveyed the scene in the menagerie tent early one August evening. “We are getting new wild animals all the time, and as they come to us there is not a man living who would dare go into the cages with them. During the winter we have to break those beasts so that we can handle them on the road. When they come to us they have thick leather collars around their necks, with heavy chains attached. The beasts are then more savage than they were before capture, that having served only to bring out all that is ugly in them. They will spit and growl at anybody who comes near their cage, and jump at the bars until they exhaust themselves. We begin to teach them manners the very day we get them, and they take a lesson in etiquette every day after that until the show starts out. My men catch the end of the chain fastened to the collar and secure it in such a manner to the bars that the beast can move only a short distance. Then I take a stout rawhide whip and strong club and enter the cage. I take a chair and sit down in a corner. The instant I get in, the beast will give a roar and spring for me. I would be torn to shreds if I were within reach; but the chain holds and instead of getting at me, the lion, tiger, panther or leopard is brought up with a shock that sends him in a heap to the floor and I give him a lash with the rawhide.