“The manner in which animals endure pain always awakens our sympathies. Horses in battle are a striking example of power of endurance and unyielding courage. After the first stinging pain of the wound, they make no sound, but bear their agony with mute, wondering endurance. Elephants also suffer agonies without flinching. When they are shot in a vital spot they sink down on the ground with a low cry, and silently pass away. A dog will go for days with a broken leg without complaint, and a wounded cat will crawl to some quiet place and brood silently over agonies which humans could not endure. A stricken deer will go to some thick wood and there in pitiful submission await the end. Lions, tigers and other beasts will do the same. Seldom do they give utterance to cries of pain. Cattle will meet the thrust of the butcher’s knife without a sound, and a wild dove, with shot from a hunter’s gun burning in its tender flesh, will fly to some high bough or lie on the ground to die, and no sound will be heard save the dripping of its life blood upon the leaves. The eagle, stricken high in air, will struggle to the last, but there will be no sound of pain, and the proud defiant look will not leave the eyes until the lids close over them and shut out the sunlight they love so well.” Sunday is fast-day in the menagerie tent, and every occupant, caged or uncaged, knows when the day arrives. When the week-day feeding hour--five o’clock in the afternoon--approaches, not one of the animals betrays the feeling of eager desire on Sunday which characterizes them all the other six days. They understand instinctively that there will be no meal. Then on Monday the “cat” animals begin to pace their cages nervously and peer through the bars awaiting the coming of the keepers. They are well aware that liver, which they relish keenly and which keeps them in good physical condition, will be the food. The Sunday abstinence is deemed by the trainers an aid to good health, as copying to some extent the habit of beasts in their native haunts, where food is not obtainable every day. There is little sickness in the menagerie. The animals are studied closely and given assiduous attention if the slightest indisposition is manifested. CHAPTER VIII LIFE WITH THE PERFORMERS