"DON'T you think that an authority on natural history would have cause for serious objection in your peculiar disposal of the animals and birds depicted by you?"

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Well, yes, I suppose he would, but I am not posing as an animal painter, you see. It might surprise you to know what facts I could place before you for authority for what I do. See here!"

The artist was working on the painting of "Una and the Lion," which is reproduced in this article on page 753, and indicated a portfolio before him with hundreds of studies of the lion.

"I go to some pains to know something of what I am doing. Where I make most of my studies, at Central Park Zoo and Barnum & Bailey's, the conditions are all so false that the nature of the beast is changed considerably; but what they do under these circumstances is very suggestive, and these suggestions are readily made into apparent facts."

Perhaps it would make no difference though whether I had this authority or not. I was wondering the other day when I saw an old dog nursing, in addition to her litter of three puppies, young lion cub, just what would become of that young lion cub in case he was

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left entirely to the care of that dog, and associated with the young puppies.

Probably it would make a great difference in his after-life, and afford plenty of material for an author or an artist that might seem like a fairy tale. I know I changed the character of a brood of young ducks which came under my care, and in this way. They were deserted in a furious rain-storm by a hen mother. I found them behind some boards, where a faint "peep" attracted my attention. They were dead, apparently, all but one, and he was about gone. I put them in my hat, and took them to the kitchen of the farm-house where I was staying. They were then transferred to a big tin pie-dish, and put into the oven. The servant-girl and myself rubbed and stirred them up, and in a few minutes they were all right, and no worse for their drenching. You know it won't do to let a young duck get too wet-it is death to them. I shall never forget that laughing servant-girl, with her piedish full of these grotesque little creatures. I adopted those ducks just to humiliate that old hen, and teach her how to bring up a family in the proper way, and assumed that summer to look out for all their creature comforts. They followed me around like a lot of

puppies, calling and coming to me when in trouble (you know there is always a lame duck to look after); and they always showed great indignation when not allowed to go with me into the farm-house. I filled a sketch-book with their little lives and the queer incidents brought about by our intimate relationship.

I have a photograph a friend lent me, of a Boston lady with a couple of young lions seated by her side. Her husband, a sea-captain, brought them home to her from one of his voyages. They were very young at that time, but grew up rapidly. As seen in the photograph they are rather dangerous looking. They followed the lady around the house like dogs, and the only time they showed anything like their natural disposition was when a Chinese laundry-man, on the opposite side of the street, made faces at them as they looked out of the window. This would work them up into such a state of ferocity, that they would be come almost unmanageable.

Now that old hen who had deserted her ducks, next time she "set," came out one day with a brood of three young ducks and one chicken. What I am going to tell you sounds "fishy," but it is a fact. Do you know the first time they went near the water, the young ducks, of course, went right in, and that old hen did her best to force the chicken to follow them. He waded in and was doing his best to adapt himself to the situation, when he got beyond his depth, and would have been drowned if it had not been for the assistance of the farmer's wife. That old

That laughing servant-girl, with her pie-dish full of these grotesque little creatures.-Page 749.

hen had peculiar notions as to how to bring up a family, and was doing her best to carry them out. I never could make up my mind what effect my lesson of humiliation had on her.

What brought me up to the farm was this: I was engaged by a gentleman to give his daughters-two very charming young girls-drawing lessons. They were staying there for the summer. I had started out to be a comic draughtsman, something in the John Leech order, but I met with no encouragement from the publishers, and the father of the young ladies, knowing my desperate circumstances, made me this offer. It was a turningpoint, and had much to do with the line of work I have chosen. The family were all great lovers of nature; the gentleman himself had that peculiar influence over animals which we sometimes see, and his daughters, particularly the eldest one, had the same power. I know of a Lady Superior in a Catholic college in the country, who, whenever she started out to walk on the grounds of the institution, which were very large

and something like a small farm, would be followed by all the animals and fowls loose on the place. She would start from the house with the cats and dogs, then the fowls, horses, cattle, etc., would follow, till she resembled the leader

of a caravan. There was only a step from the Mother Superior to the beautiful story of St. Francis preaching the sermon to the birds.

The two girls I have mentioned were great observers and collectors of natural objects, and introduced me to everything in the neighborhood in that line. Butterflies, beetles, turtles, squirrels, chipmunks, flowers, and mosses, gave me my first insight to all the attractions of nature. Almost the first day I was there, the younger one took me down to the spring-house, where the milk was kept, to see the tame frogs. The frogs were encouraged by the farmers, as it was said that they helped keep the water pure. Two bull-frogs were having a "set to" when we arrived, and it would have made John L. Sullivan and Mike Donovan jealous to see the "style and game" of these two creatures as they sat up in the water and slapped each other's faces. The ducks had followed me down, and showed some interest in the combat. I often sketched there afterward, handling them for the purpose of more minute study, and they didn't seem to mind it. Through the ducks I was introduced to the rest of the poultry-yard, and we soon were on the best of terms. I ran down the yard one day with the old rooster, to help him fight a hawk that had attacked a wandering hen and her brood of chickens. We "licked," and the hawk took flight, and as we trotted back to the remainder of his family, I felt quite certain that a rooster

has a language of his own, and that he was doing his best to express his congratulations. Our friendship from that time was of the most intimate character.

I wanted one day to make a sketch of some dead poultry to introduce in a Thanksgiving idea I was about to submit to one of our publishing houses, and just to see how much confidence they had in me, I took a young hen, tied her up by the legs, hung her, head down, on a nail in the wall, and made a sketch of her in that position without a movement or sound of remonstrance on her part. The orchard was a favorite place for work. If I brought up a turtle from the pond, or borrowed a frog from the spring-house to make a study of, I always had a most interesting audience from the poultryyard gathered around me, lighting on my shoulders, and with outstretched necks examining with great curiosity my unusual model. frog, if you know him well, or he knows you well, will often keep very still for a few minutes; then he jumps in the direction he is pointed regardless of consequences.

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Young Sand-pipers. 751

When he jumped my audience would disappear around the corner of the barn in a great state of disorder, only to return again to satisfy their curiosity. In New York I used to go up to a Fourth Avenue saloon to study a bull-frog they had there. His home, during the day, was in the tank in which glasses were washed, and at night he would come up and sit on the edge of it. He was fed but once during two years, and he was supposed to live on what came from the glasses. One night two gold fishes were put in the tank. The next morning they were gone; and as the frog looked a little stouter than usual, it was evident where they had gone. I have noticed one thing: you never can tell where frogs are looking; and they'll jump off a twenty-story building if you give them the opportunity.

I saw a young girl in the lion-house at the Central Park Zoo modelling a tiger. One morning I watched her for some time, and after she got through her work and was about to go, she took a rose from her dress and threw it into the animal. You know some of the cat family are very susceptible to the different odors, and the action of that tiger must have astonished the young girl. There was every expression of animal gladness in the way that he fondled and caressed the flower. I suggested to the young lady that it might be perfectly safe for her to go in the cage, the tiger seemed in such an amiable mood. She seemed half inclined to act on my suggestion and go in, but perhaps it was just as well she didn't. You can never trust them.

Once at Barnum & Bailey's headquarters, I played a game of pitch the ball with an elephant. I had heard of this particular animal's fondness for throwing things, so I thought I would experiment with him. I made a small ball of hay, tying it up with a string, and tossed it over to him; he had just finished his meal and was in a good condition for the game. He threw it back, and we kept it up for some time, but all of a sudden, for some unexplained reason, he became greatly enraged and began to tear up some boarding near him and hurl it at me, and I had a narrow escape from being

brained. Arstingstall, one of Barnum's favorite elephant keepers, was thrown thirty feet one day by an elephant (a very good-natured animal he was too) to whom he was trying to administer a quinine pill.

I have a sketch on my wall--a rough cartoon of a tigress creeping up through the jungle with a most wicked glare in her eye, as if about to spring on a very pretty young woman in diaphanous drapery, who is seated on a bank with her feet in the water, apparently dreaming over a lapful of lotus flowers. That picture was suggested, and an order given to paint it, by a young New England girl, who is, or thought she was, a "reincarnationist.” She was one of the finest specimens of New England beauties I have ever seen, from the best old Puritan and Huguenot stock, her father, a magnificent specimen of manhood, following in the faith of his fathers; but she, in a future state, expected or hoped to take the form of a tigress, and go around eating up good-looking young girls. Queer idea, wasn't it, and she had such a sweet and sympathetic disposition? I took the order, but do you know I was never able to make that animal take the fatal leap. With a great deal of persuasion I induced Mr. Conklin, the former careful and thoroughly experienced superintendent at the Central Park Zoo, to allow a tiger to be enraged up to a most desperate point, by having a young bear cub placed dangerously near his cage, and I made lots of studies in movement and expression of that animal's most ferocious efforts to get at the cub, but it was of no use. I then changed the whole idea, and made a recumbent tigress looking up with a most placid expression into the face of the young woman, who still continued to dream over the lilies. The "reincarnationist was disgusted, and I sold my "idyl" at a quarter of the price to "another fellow." That change of expression cost me $750, and should have taught me a lesson, which some of my realistic friends would say served me right.

One of my female critics, who is not in sympathy with my work, was looking the other day at a picture of mine