Tuesday's Daily News contains an account of the dis- closures
made by Mr. Gaylord, an American " show-agent," to an interviewer at Hong-Kong. It appears that the excitement in regard to the expatriation of 'Jumbo,' and his cruel separa- tion from his beloved 'Alice,' was carefully got up by the late Mr. Barnum in order to " boom " his show. Barnum is said to have found the £1,000 required for the attempt to obtain an injunction to restrain the Zoological Society from selling Jumbo.' It was he, too, it is asserted, who arranged Jumbo's' refusal to leave Alice.' The elephant's keeper was told to give a quiet sign to his charge to lie down, and 'Jumbo' thereupon refused to move. When, however, enough excitement had been produced, and the American papers had been induced to cable columns of adver- tisement, Jumbo' got up and went off like a lamb. The little comedy appears to have been excellent business, for Barnum's receipts, after the acquisition of Jumbn,' rose by £80,000. Oddly enough, though Jumbo's' affection for Alice' was purely fictitious, he appears to have been a beast of feeling. He was, it is said, sincerely attached to the little "clown elephant" in the show, and it was in endeavouring to push his " chum " out of the way of the train that Jumbo' lost his life. Perhaps, however, this story is only an adver- tisement for ' Jumbo's' skeleton.
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