The next day was clear, but Gawaine did not get up at dawn. Indeed, it
was almost noon when the Headmaster found him cowering in bed, with the
clothes pulled over his head. The principal called the Assistant
Professor of Pleasaunce, and together they dragged the boy toward the
forest.
"He'll be all right as soon as he gets a couple more dragons under his
belt," explained the Headmaster.
The Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce agreed. "It would be a shame to
stop such a fine run," he said. "Why, counting that one yesterday, he's
killed fifty dragons."
They pushed the boy into a thicket above which hung a meager cloud of
steam. It was obviously quite a small dragon. But Gawaine did not come
back that night or the next. In fact, he never came back. Some weeks
afterward brave spirits from the school explored the thicket, but they
could find nothing to remind them of Gawaine except the metal parts of
his medals. Even the ribbons had been devoured.
The Headmaster and the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce agreed that it
would be just as well not to tell the school how Gawaine had achieved
his record and still less how he came to die. They held that it might
have a bad effect on school spirit. Accordingly, Gawaine has lived in
the memory of the school as its greatest hero. No visitor succeeds in
leaving the building to-day without seeing a great shield which hangs on
the wall of the dining hall. Fifty pairs of dragons' ears are mounted
upon the shield and underneath in gilt letters is "Gawaine le
Coeur-Hardy," followed by the simple inscription, "He killed fifty
dragons." The record has never been equaled.
How To Be a Lion Tamer
_The Ways of the Circus_ is a decidedly readable book, rich in anecdotes
of the life of circus folk and circus animals. The narrator is an old
lion tamer and Harvey W. Root, who has done the actual writing, has
managed to keep a decidedly naïve quality in the talk as he sets it
down. There is a delightful chapter, for instance, in which Conklin
tells how he first became a lion tamer. By gradual process of promotion
he had gone as far as an elephant, but his salary was still much lower
than that of Charlie Forepaugh, the lion man. There were three lions
with the circus, but Charlie never worked with more than one in the cage
at the time. Conklin got the notion that an act with all the lions in
action at once would be a sensational success. He was not sure that it
could be done, as he had had no experience with lions. The only way to
find out was to try. Accordingly Conklin sneaked into the menagerie
alone, late at night, to ascertain whether or not lions lay along his
natural bent.
"The animals seemed somewhat surprised at being disturbed in the middle
of the night," he says, "and began to pace rapidly up and down their
cages. I paid no attention to this, but opened the door of each cage in
succession and drove them out. Then I began as sternly as I could to
order them round and give them their cues.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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