Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/632



bar. See here, on summer days when all four leave their work of carrying childhood in two-pennyworths; just on the home side of the tunnel under the Outer Circle stands a refreshment bar. With any excuse whatsoever, but usually with no excuse at all, Jung Perchad, Suffa Culli, Jingo, and Solomon will linger wistfully about this bar. Buns are their ostensible object, but I know they covet beer. Even a bun, however, will be taken in good part, and it takes a vast number of buns to offend an elephant. Buns, indeed, are the civilized elephant's chief article of commerce, and between the elephants and the bears is much trade rivalry. Solomon is understood to be agitating for a pole, to place the establishment upon an equal footing with the opposition.

Bank Holiday is a terrible day for these elephants. No reasonable elephant can refuse a bun, or an apple, or a lead-pencil, or a boy's hat, when it is offered. It might hurt the donor's feelings; further, some day, in the winter, when nobody comes, he might want just such refreshment. But it is sad to think of the faithful elephant towards the end of the day, weighed down to the very earth with the offerings of an injudicious public, helplessly contemplating the last bun, with no inch of storage left. And sadder to know that, when the struggle is done, and that last bun deposited, with dolor and affliction, upon the varied accumulation which he envelops, that elephant will proceed indoors to face the officially-provided supper—a barn full of "cow's wittles" (Suffolkese) and a serried company of pails full of mash. What he does