in her own place. Prince and Nancy are a fine old couple of lions—married fifteen years, and a peaceable, comfortable old pair still. Ask Sutton, the head lion-keeper, about Prince and Nancy. Sutton, by-the-bye, will soon have been employed in these gardens for forty years. If I were a statistician I probably could prove, by rule of arithmetic, that Sutton has been killed many times over, in the course of so many years among lions and tigers. Not being a statistician, I am compelled to admit that he hasn't. Sutton enjoys the distinction of being the only thing in the lion-house never sketched by the artists and the sketchers who are not artists.
The air of freedom.
Toothache.
It is noticeable that a lion—any lion, every lion—likes to take his ease with his nose stuffed out between the bars—by way, probably, of sniffing the air of freedom, and feeling as much at liberty as possible in the circumstances, regardless of contact with the iron of the cage. I am not sure that this muzzle-exposure is always good for Felis Leo; I have a suspicion that it may be responsible for some of the toothaches wherewith he now and again is afflicted, and ascribes, probably, to Sutton's partiality for open windows. A lion with a toothache is a pitiable thing; still, a thing to which I should prefer to administer comfort from the opposite side of the bars; and one the extraction of whose tooth I could leave, without envy, in other hands. Any person of ordinary humanity would prefer losing a tooth of his own to inflicting the pain of extraction upon—say Duke here—with his own hand. There is more tenderness for the feelings of dumb animals than one might imagine in the world, in such circumstances as these. Although why Duke should be called a dumb animal is not easy to explain after hearing his shocking language if dinner arrives a little later than suits him.
You dirty lion.
Notwithstanding all his grandeur and all his posing, the lion doesn't sufficiently wash his face; nor, indeed, any other part of himself. A tiger's ablutionary lickings are disproportionately few and small in area compared with those of the humble tom-cat of our native tiles. But compared with those of the lion they are profuse, excessive, superfluous. The lion has not yet learned the lesson of personal cleanliness. Some day, if I think of it when I see him, I shall suggest to Sutton the expedient of turning the garden hose on these lions. I don't believe they would enjoy it at first, but their education must begin somewhere. And Sutton might find this process more convenient than an actual bodily assault with soap and towels, although, considered as a spectacle, this plan would have its merits; and
