MY. LADY ELEPHANT

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 25, 29 July 1922, Page 12

MY. LADY ELEPHANT

THE MOODS OF INDARINI.

There is certainly something about the elephant which appeals; to our human nature. No dumb animal has. touched ao poignantly-the. groat heart.of the people as Jumbo. The nation which watched with lamentations and tears' his transla\ tion tp Mr. Barnum's show, (says tho\ London Daily Telegraph) .will certainly . not' read without emotion of the perplex-" ities of Indarini.' Owing to the tribulations of the war. and the peace, the Zoological Gardens came, to Jack sufficient elephant transport for the V requisitions •made 'made by London's nurseries. The plaints of ' youth wore loud, and, reached even to India, whence the Maharajah of Cooch Behar sent a she elephant, mature, trained, warranted quiet to ride or drive. Last, season all was well. Indarini —the tion tragedy], tint she is" quite real —carried a daily quota of boys and"girls, and the. catnols and the llamas were not more popular. But when she "Was brought out for a trial; trip thisi-'spring she began to jhow that she had a" temperamentl. She • did not Jike.-tho-jiew.. steps, which..had been ;,providefl for,mounting.-her. To1 make .her stand by tjhose steps.was beyond the powor of man.. The old steps were brought out again; and fora\while,lhdarin; carried on. But she is a femme incomprise, and determined :to'have that understood. ' One day she-brought off a lightning strike. Having deposited a load of children, she declined to take another, and over the subsequent emotions of the small people who ah-eady taken tickets for her back we prefer to draw a veil. But Indarini was not softened by their tears. . To blandishments 'and to' commands alike she opposed a stolid front. The baffled zoologists -must have muttered to themselves Shakespeare's remarkable sentence, "The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy." Indarini was not courteous. Day by day, and in every way, she grew worse and .worse, till she declined to leave herpaddock at all. "For if she will, she will, you may depend, on" 't. But if she won't, she won't, and there's an end on ?-t." It does not appear to have occurred to the Zoological Society to consult the . locus classicus on, the handling of elephants by the European—Mr. .Kipling's account of .Terence, Mulvaney's .roughriding of Malachi. . or| perhaps,- Mulvaney's methods were thought too extravagant for our. impoverished world. What was done.was to import to the Zoo an Indian mahout who could talk to Indarini in the language of her i native land. What he said to the ■ lady we-are not to inquire, but it is in evidence that ho brought her to a sense of sin. Heneforth the visitor' to the Zoo may behold Indarini, fully laden, turning and .wheeling to the honeyedNaccents in which her. English keeper has learnt ,to speak- the vernacular of tho East.. ■ '