Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/527

 sticks and umbrellas to attract his attention; but he only gazes dreamily away into some other region of space. They get angrier, and hurl guide-books and cigar-ends; and he stares placidly at the ceiling. They waggle hats on sticks, as irritatingly as possible, and he glances casually at his bedroom door. Even when it seems proper to transfer his gaze from the space at the left of his interviewer to that at his right, it sweeps round with a most offensive air of passing over mere space; or perhaps it passes over the insulted person's head. With the keeper it is different. No tiger is a hero to his keeper, and the tiger knows it. The keeper has found him out long ago, and it is useless to attitudinize before him, or to attempt to ignore his existence. So the tiger tries to rush at him under the bars. The keeper is associated in his mind, and very naturally, with something to eat. The keeper always appears with the beef, but although the beef comes between the bars, he is always defrauded of the keeper. Wherefore the keeper is a bête-noir, a constant reminder of a good meal put under his nose and taken away again. Perhaps it may be hinted to those nobly ambitious of attracting the notice of a lion or tiger, that the hat-trick may be expensive if tried upon a young and frolicsome animal. A sudden temptation, such as the offer of a new hat, may cause a young lion or tiger to forget his dignity for some little time—as long as the hat lasts. It was a very few Sundays ago that Victoria—the young lioness here belonging to the Queen—secured a very decent bowler, which had been extended with a view of reaching something from the ledge before the cage. Victor, her mate, although, of course, connected with Royalty by marriage, so far unbent as to participate in that hat, which provided a pleasant twenty minutes' entertainment; at the close of which the late owner borrowed a peaked cap from the keeper, and went home. But Victor does not unbend as a rule. He is an affable lion, however, perfectly friendly with those he knows. He might almost be allowed out, were it not that the artists and the photographers, and the daubers and sketchers who are neither, would probably suffer from his natural indignation. So he sits behind the bars and dreams of the golden time when all things shall be free and equal, and he shall kick those people and all their works into the outer darkness.