JUMBO’S BUSY LIFE AT THE ZOÖLOGICAL GARDENS, AND HIS LOVE FOR LITTLE
CHILDREN.
Jumbo has had a busy life. I would tell my young readers that, as Mrs.
General Garfield once said, “a busy life is the happiest.” That good and
noble lady once wrote to our late worthy President, and told him her
happiest thoughts came to her when she was busy “baking the nice white
bread” and thinking of her dear noble husband, who was also busy “all
the way through,” from the time he drove the boat horse on the canal
bank, up to the time he embraced his good old mother in the presence of
thousands of his country’s representatives at Washington, during the
scene of his inauguration.
Jumbo, I say, has been a busy, industrious creature all his life,
especially since I brought him from his sick bed. He is like many a
noble-minded man, who has been stricken down with sickness and raised up
again, like old Job, to bless and magnify his creator. Jumbo has had no
idle days for “loafing” or hanging around stores or otherwise wasting
his time. He has been engaged in carrying around the children of the
human family almost daily for twenty years, and I suppose no animal has
ever carried so many on his back as Jumbo. Certainly I can claim for him
that no animal ever did his work more affectionately or tenderly, and
freer from accident.
Once when I was riding him around in the Zoölogical Gardens, in London,
sitting on his neck, with about a dozen children on a panier-saddle
across his broad back, we were proceeding down the path. It was on a
delightful summer afternoon, and the grass plots, flowers, plants, and
trees, which abound in those magnificent gardens, looked beautiful. I
was engaged talking to the dozen “little folk” who occupied his back,
and encouraging them to sit very quietly and not fall off, when all at
once Master Jumbo came to a standstill for some cause or other. I
shouted to him to go along, but for once he did not obey the order. As I
turned round to see what was the matter, there was a lady running over
the grass-plot on to the path, screaming and shouting, “Oh, my poor
child! my child, my child! oh, he will be killed, he will be killed!”
Well, I looked down from my elevation and saw Jumbo deliberately and
coolly putting his trunk around the body of an infant that escaped its
mother’s apron-strings and had run and fallen in front of Jumbo. Jumbo
is a very careful walker, and always looks where he is going, and, like
some others of God’s creatures, is rather slow in his movements, but
both very sure footed and thoughtful. He just stopped right there,
gently picked up the child by the waist with his trunk, and laid it on
the green grass beside its screaming mother, more tenderly than the
mother afterward took up the frightened child in her excitement.
Jumbo never gets excited when he is attending to children. He might get
mad once in a while, when some drunken fool tries to prick him with pins
stuck in a cake, or otherwise fool him. Jumbo always knows parties that
try to play tricks upon him when he is being exhibited to the masses of
humanity, and if ever any of such parties should come within the reach
of Jumbo a second time it wouldn’t be good for him. A woman would not do
a dirty trick to Jumbo.
Now, my dear young boys, let me tell you that Jumbo was only ten years
old at this time, and I want you to see right here the great lesson
taught by Jumbo in this tender action: to always be kind, loving, and
helpful to your little sisters when you see them fall down or hurt
themselves, and, if you learn to carry this into practice, this trivial
incident of God’s wisdom, through one of his creatures, will be a
blessed and profitable habit all through life, and your friend and Jumbo
will be fully rewarded.
I want you to think of Jumbo as a kind, affectionate creature; never
mind his being an awkward, overgrown “old boy”; don’t look at the
exterior so much. “Fine feathers make fine birds,” is an old saying, but
remember, when you see a little girl anyway in trouble, you should go
instantly to the rescue, and remember that poor Jumbo did the same
thing.