four ice-houses had been brought out on the track to break a record. They were as hard to start as four sprinters. One old fellow with a mastodon's head seemed to think it was a fool's game, and deliberately turned his tail on the starter. His mahout (driver) coaxed him with an iron prod like a boat hook. There was a little fellow, a baby, about five feet high, who concluded that he would like to do the old fellows up. He had not been entered, it seemed-probably it was not a boy's race-but he was bound to start with them. Finally they got away-the baby in the lead. It was a capital start, old Mastodon seemed to think, for he jockeyed the others and made play to keep the baby in front with his trunk. The pace was not terrific; it was more majestic-more like four barns being gently blown along by the wind. Somebody shouted an order, and a hive of natives swarmed over the course and side-tracked the baby. Then the elders freshened to the race they strained every nerve. I had a stop-watch out, timing them. At the half mile, just opposite the little stand, they had done it in 2.30. That gait was no good for a stop-watch. It seemed folly to time such huge creatures with a fussy, ticking little thing like a watch; a grandfather's clock would have done better. I put it away in my pocket, and bet a Haji five rupees on Mastodon. The natives had smuggled the baby back past the stand, and lay in wait with him two hundred yards from the finish. It was a one-mile course, and the elephants would finish where they had started from, in front of the stand. There was as much cheering and bad language as on Derby day. There was plenty of time for it. As the four ponderous fellows came laboring along, the natives slipped the baby in front of them, and he came sidling along merrily, his little pig eyes gleaming with fun, and old Mastodon caressing him softly with the fingers of his huge trunk. But it was not in the Koran that the Haji should pay me that five rupees, because of the baby elephant. And because of that race I know the elephant is not the swiftest thing on earth, by several minutes to the mile. It is difficult to size up the horse-power of an elephant. Looking at his legs, in their post-like immensity, one would not hesitate it slightly tangled up. Old Raja Singh's on to build a fair-sized brick cottage on his back; but as his strength is usually employed to move things laterally, we have no rule to measure him by. I saw a big fellow tested once in the Zoological Gardens in Calcutta. It was not a scientific investigation; it was not the result of an argument—it was simply done to amuse people. It was a tug-of-war between one of these animals and thirty-five sailors. The elephant did not pull with his hands his trunk-but was hitched up in regular fashion by harness to a long rope. Thirty-five lusty sailors laid hold of the other end, and the word was given. He pulled for the honor of his native jungles; but slowly, steadily, the sailors worked him backward. The mahout plied his goad, and the elephant trumpeted in anger, but it was no use. That was his horse-power thirty-five sailors. When I lived in Rangoon a friend of mine had much to do with the elephants at the saw-mills there. The saw-mills of Rangoon and Maulmein give daily the greatest elephant show on earth. All the little tricks these clever giants do in shows are tiny and poor in comparison. I was in the office of my friend, the big mill owner, one afternoon, when a loinclothed native, steaming with perspiration, rushed in, and salaaming deeply, handed him a note. I recognized the man as a coolie from the mill. Something serious had happened, I judged from his frightened look. I watched my friend's face narrowly. I might as well have studied the moon; there was only a look of blank, utter amazement on it. He handed me the note this is what I read: Honored Sir:—I would bring to your honor's kind recollection the caprices of a demented mad elephant, and ask for your honor's instructions in the same. He is beastly bad one, and notwithstanding that he has already suivided thirty-three of his defunct relatives, he is tow murderously intent on all having a similitude to his kind, in the appearance of domestic milch buffaloes, and thereafter. He has raided all the villages in the environs of No. 2 Division, and the coolies and ry ts are frighten for the lives and persons, although he has not yet crimed the manslaughter, but only the buffaloes, and not the cows. Mr. Theobald is here just now, and wants your honor's generous advice to shoot or otherwise this furious packshidedams. The fire lines are awaiting the monster's removal as the men wonts work in fear and trembling. A quick response will ever be grateful to your most humble servant, R. RAMALINGUM. "It seems a serious business," I said, looking at Rathbone (that was his name). "Yes," he answered; "the Baboo has got the rampage, I'm sure, and if it is he, there'll be the very deuce to pay. He takes these streaks sometimes; but it's usually some budmash of a mahout stealing his food, or trying to work him after the whistle blows for dinner, or something of that sort, that stirs him up. But he's a regular Sheitan (devil) when he gets going. We'll drive out there. Will you go?" he asked. "I won't have the old Raja shot if I can help it," he said, as we bowled along in the tom-tom behind his gray Pegu pony. "He's worth a good £400; but it isn't that. He knows more than any man I've got working about the place. He saved my life once; but it's a long story; I haven't time to tell it now." Things were We had arrived at the mill. in an uproar. The coolies had cleared out; none of the other elephants were working; in fact, the mill was shut down. Raja Singh was over in the coolie lines, they said, playing basket-ball with the little bamboo huts. We could hear a smash once in a while, like a tree dragging its branches down through other trees as it fell in the jungle. Then a cheery note of triumph from Raja Singh's melodious trumpet. He was having a merry time, and all to himself. He had thrown his mahout on the top of a huge pile of slabs before starting on his voyage of destruction. That was a lucky chance for the mahout. A Calcutta-made pony cart had been standing in front of the manager's bungalow when Raja Singh started on his jamboree. Its bright red wheels, yellow running-gear, and black body, polished like lacquer-work, excited his curiosity. He picked it to pieces as a boy dissects a watch. He seemed to like the wheels best-even the spokes had to come out of their hubs. It was a poor toyit did not last long. The bamboo huts were better there were more of them. I learned about the mahout and the cart while Rathbone was preparing his net for the capture. The Baboo who had written the letter told me. He demolished English even as Raja Singh laid the coolie lines waste. His history of how things were going, the things pertaining to Raja Singh, was of a complex nature. "He is exuberant bad fellow," he assured me. "My house-gods are dislocated because of his illogical discipline." It was really too bad. After the Baboo had gone to so much pains to acquire a good English education, Raja Singh had flattened out his house as though it was only a coolie's hut. Rathbone had one good fighting elephant. He was a sort of fox-terrier elephant. He was good-natured himself, and never gave any trouble; but nothing pleased him so much as to get a big logging-chain in his trunk, and go at a budmash mate and lambaste the evil spirits out of him. They called him the "Phoongye" (priest), because he was a dirty snuff-color-something like a native priest's robe. Close by, at the other company's mill, was another elephant that would work with the Phoongye in their little chastising game. Raja Singh back and forth between them until he was glad to stand still while a chain was made fast to his hind leg, just above the foot. Then he was chained to a big tree, and left to cogitate upon the evil of losing his temper. "He'll be all right in a few days," said Rathbone, "but it's expensive business paying for broken limbs and damaged houses. Every coolie that he has even frightened will want backshish." The next time I saw Raja Singh he was calmly pulling great slabs from a pile at the Rathbone soon got these two together; tail end of the saw, and carting them away also two or three acres of coolies, and Raja to a distance. I sat down and watched him, Singh began to find things warming up a bit. I and the verbose Baboo. A mahout was He had been lamenting that the coolie houses perched on his back on an old gunny-bag pad, wouldn't stand up and fight; the coolies but his office was a sinecure. The Raja was themselves ran away-it was uninteresting. doing all the work, and the thinking, too. When the Phoongye and his mate swooped He would draw six or eight huge slabs from down upon him, Raja thought it fine fun at the pile with his trunk, place them very first; he didn't know they were organized. evenly together, pass a chain around them, But when the big chains made play on his run it through the slip hook in the most apribs and about his cabbage-leaf-shaped ears, proved fashion, and attach himself by his he began to take thought with himself. The traces to the load. Then he'd move off Phoongye was good at the battering-ram majestically, swinging his trunk back and business, too; so was his mate; they battered forth, as though he were some great piece At of mechanism and the trunk the pendulum. he was carrying cn his tusks as easily as a At the end of his walk was a pile of slabs. man might carry a stick of cordwood. Upon this he placed those he had brought, piling it he was as ingenious as the Raja. methodically, exactly, each one in the place He would place one end up, back to the other where it fitted best, and all smooth and even, end of the stick, lift it up also, and then as a careful workman should. The Madrassi take a squint along to see that it was all mahout hummed a ditty of more or less straight. If either end stuck out a little moral worth, by way of having something too far, he would place his trunk or foreto do. head against it and shove it in. Other elephants were all about, working in the same matter-of-fact, intelligent way. One big fellow was shoving a stick of square timber on end through a narrow place. He had his fore-foot against the end, and at every step he gave it a shove, just as a man pushes a stone with his foot. Raja Singh flapped his ears reproachfully as he turned back for another load, and filled his trunk with odds and ends as he moved leisurely along. A stray nail, three or four pebbles, a tuft of grass with a little earth clinging to the roots, and a discarded cheroot formed the bulk of the treasures he found. As he came opposite us he curled his trunk upward, with a quiet, sinuous movement, and blew the lot against the naked stomach of the dozing mahout. It was one of the little jokes he whiled away the hours of labor with-just like any other navvy. A little farther over, the Phoongye was piling square timber. Huge pieces, a foot square and more, and over twenty feet long, At twelve o'clock the whistles blew, as we sat there, the Baboo and I; he always talking, and I watching the more intelligent animal, the elephant. With the same spirit of punctuality that induces the hod-carrier to drop his load of bricks from half-way up the ladder at the sound of the noon hour, these Titans dropped everything, and turned their attention each to the wash-tub full of grain provided for their dinner. ADVENTURES OF A TRAIN-DESPATCHER. BY CAPTAIN JASPER EWING BRADY, JR., U. S. A. A NIGHT OFFICE IN TEXAS. A STUTTERING DESPATCHER.-MAKING A SCHEDULE FOR A SPECIAL. HE climate of X, my new point. The atmosphere was so full of malaoffice, did not agree with ria that you could almost cut it with an axe. me, and after I had been I stayed there three days, and then, fortuthere a short while I threw nately, the chief despatcher ordered me to up my job and went South. come to his office. He wanted me to take Landing in St. Louis one the office of Boling Cross, near the Texas bright fall morning, I went line, but I wanted to go further South, and he up to the office of the chief sent me down on the I. & G. N., and the despatcher of the Q. M. & chief there sent me to Herron, Texas. S., and applied for an office on his division. He had none to give me, but he wired the chief despatcher at Big Rock, and in answer thereto I was sent the next morning to Healyville. And what a place I found! The town was down in the swamps of southeast Missouri, four miles from the Arkansas line, and consisted of the depot and twenty or twenty-five houses, of which five were saloons. There was a branch road running from here to Honiton, quite a settlement on the Mississippi River, and that was the only excuse for an office at this A few days after I arrived, I noticed that the town had filled up with" cow-punchers." They had just had their semi-annual roundup, and were in town spending their money and having a whooping big time. I was a tender-foot of the worst kind, and every one at the boarding-house and the depot seemed to make a point of telling me of the shooting scrapes and rackets of these cow-boys, and how they delighted in making it warm for a tender-foot. Bob Wolfe, the day man, told me how at times they had come up and raised a disturbance at the depot, especially when there was a new operator. I didn't believe all their stories, but I will confess that I had a few misgivings when I went to work. One night passed safely, but the second one was a "hummer." The office was some just outside the office the greatest commotion I had ever heard. I was eating my midnight lunch, and had a piece of pie in my hand, when there came the report of a shot, and with a crash out went one of my lights, a shower of glass "One of them picked up the lantern, and swaggering over to where I sat all trembling. what larger than the telegraph office in most small towns. The table was in the recess of a big bay-window, giving me a clear view of the I. & G. N. tracks, while along in front ran the usual long wide platform. There were two lamps over my desk-one on each side of the bay-window-and one out in the waiting-room. I also kept a lantern lighted to carry when I went out to trains. All through the early part of the night I heard sounds of the revelry and carousing up town, but about half-past eleven they ceased, and I was congratulating myself that my night would, after all, be uneventful. About twelve o'clock, however, there arose falling on the table. Before I could collect myself there came another shot, and smash went the other light. I dropped my pie, and spasmodically grasped the table. The only lights left were the one in the waiting-room and my lantern, which made it in the office little better than total darkness. Soon I heard the tramp of many feet upon the platform; it sounded to me like the tramp of a regiment. In a moment the waiting-room door was thrown open, and with a wild whoop and a big hurrah, the crowd came in. The door between the office and the waiting-room was closed, but that made no difference to my visitors; they smashed it open, and swarmed into the office. One of them picked up the lantern, and swaggering over to where I sat all trembling, raised it up to my face. They all crowded around me, and one of them gave me a punch in the ribs. Then the one with the lantern said, "Well, fellows, the little man is game. He didn't get under the table. Kid, for a tender-foot, you are a hummer." Get under the table! I couldn't. I would have given half my interest in the hereafter to have been able to crawl under the table or to have run away. But fright held its sway, and locomotion was impossible. For about five minutes the despatcher |