"You say the leopards are most dangerous?"
"Yes."
"For twenty-five dollars a night I will go in with them, alone, and run
them around with a whip." As I proposed this, in the background of my
consciousness was the conviction that by so doing I could win Vanna's
love....
"No ... the leopards are too uncertain."
* * * * *
The papers were full of my deed. And I was not made fun of, but
commended. And it was announced (for advertising purposes only, of
course) that the management of the show had approached me with an offer
to travel as a trainer of wild animals.
The second night I was rather blasé. I shook my finger playfully in the
face of one of the seated lions ... to have a sensation of a thousand
prickles running sharp through each pore, when the lion responded with
an open, crimson-mouthed, yellow-fanged snarl; I smelt the carrion
fetor of his breath. I stepped back rather quickly. All the animals grew
restless and furtive. Little greenish-amber gleams lit and flickered in
their eyes.