a strange thing occurs. Jumbo stops and trembles. He utters low moans. The affectionate creature embraces, with his trunk, Scott, his favourite attendant. Scott at duty's call begs him to move forward. Alice is heard weeping "off." Jumbo kneels to his keeper in dumb despair. Scott urges him to rise and follow him into the Outer Circle. Jumbo shakes his ears, rolls slowly on his side, and lifting up his head trumpets out with fine indignation that the answer is in the negative.

This was the trunk call for help, the S.O.S. that got through and brought the British nation to his side.

For four weeks Jumbo is the centre-piece of English life. Thousands flock to the gardens to see him, murmur a fond farewell, and mingle their tears with those of the faithful Alice. The Queen telegraphs to the Committee. The Prince of Wales telegraphs. Hundreds of men, women, and children from all parts of the British Isles send letters and parcels of buns and sweets to Jumbo himself. The papers are crowded out with correspondence. "A Clergyman" denounces "this cruel and inhuman bargain." "Minnie," Ada," "Maud," and 'Jummy's Little Friend" send their sixpences for his defence.

A wise doctor in Harley Street collects subscriptions. Romer, Q.c., is retained. Legal opinions are taken, and the world hears with relief that a notice of motion is served and that for the moment at least Jumbo is safely in Chancery.

Simple citizens who got their notions of Chancery from "Jarndyce v. Jarndyce," imagined that "re Jumbo" would go droning along for years, and meanwhile their

old friend would remain in the gardens. Alas! the days of Lord Eldon are gone. The motion turns out to be really a motion and moves apace.

To the plain man, too, it seemed a monstrous injustice that while Barnum, the American showman, was made a party to the action, Jumbo, our own inimitable Jumbo, remained a stranger to the suit. Being, as I have said, a chattel in the eyes of the law, Jumbo could not be a party to an action. You could not even endow Jumbo with a fund and make him a ward in Chancery. With this absurd result, that Jumbo, the real hero of the legal drama, was never heard at all and was not even allowed to put his trunk to an affidavit.

Another clever suggestion made at the time was not acted upon, and here Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister, was undoubtedly to blame. It was pointed out that Caligula, the Roman Emperor, had made his horse a consul. If this precedent had been followed and Jumbo had been made a Minister without portfolio, the Courts would probably have held that the sale of a Cabinet Minister to an American freak show was against public policy and Jumbo would have remained with us. Even if Jumbo had sat on the Cabinet many thought that it would have done no harm.

As it was, the case for an injunction to restrain the removal of Jumbo turned on charters and by-laws and the rights of a committee to sell "surplus stock ”—an offensive phrase which grated on the susceptibilities of the elephant's best friends. Mr. Justice Chitty in refusing an injunction recognised that there was a moral and national side to the transaction, upon which he would

not adjudicate. It was a misfortune that the case could not have been tried by a jury. No jury would have decided against Jumbo. But Chancery could not save him. Chancery was tried and found wanting.

The final scenes of the drama were perhaps less dignified. Children thronged the gardens to share their last buns with Jumbo, who over-ate himself disgracefully. His neighbours in the Zoo were neglected and grew soured and jealous. The Bactrian camel stood hungrily sneering over his garden rails at the crowds round the elephant house. The brown bears climbed their poles and swung open-mouthed towards the children who hurried along towards Jumbo.

Grave disapprobation, too, was expressed at the conduct of Alice when it was heard that, bribed by a bun, she had been trotting in and out of the travelling cage to decoy Jumbo to his fate.

Jumbo himself remained a hero to the end. With dignified resignation he retired from the contest, loyally accepting the judgment of Chitty, J., and stepping into his box of his own free will. It was felt that he had set us all a noble example of law-abiding loyalty which we ourselves must follow if we were worthy to be Jumbo's friends.

On March 23 a strange procession was formed. Since the days when popular victims made the last journey to Tyburn nothing like it is recorded. Ten of Pickford's strongest horses were fastened to Jumbo's car. Down Albany Street, along the Euston Road, through Clerkenwell to Tower Hill, and so to the Docks, Jumbo, followed by crowds of friends in carriages, in hansoms, and on foot,

drives on in triumph. A good lady who had followed him with tears in her eyes provides him with copious draughts of beer for his breakfast; another admirer gives him a nip of whisky.

His cage is swung carefully into a lighter, which drops down the tideway to the Assyrian Monarch, in which vessel his passage has been taken. The quays are thronged with cheering friends, crowds of boats follow the lighter with its precious freight, and a hundred sirens and steamwhistles echo the trumpet calls of Jumbo's farewell.

Such was the passing of Jumbo. Love, friendship, and honour were weighed in the scale against contracts and by-laws.

Chancery failed us.

Chapter XIV: Concerning What the
Archon Did

I

T is a comfortable theory among the middle classes

that imprisonment for debt is abolished. They

remember "Little Dorrit " and know that the Marshalsea is pulled down, and believe that imprisonment for debt went with it. For their own class it has been abolished since 1869, but Parliament deliberately retained it as a good discipline for the poor. The spendthrift of the aristocracy may fling other people's thousands about and waste his own substance in riotous living, but when the day of reckoning comes he planks down ten pounds and a humble petition (in bankruptcy), and a kindly Registrar begs him go forth and sin again, if he feels inclined to, at the end of two years.

But if a man on a weekly wage is improvident or unfortunate and runs into debt for a few pounds, a County Court Judge commands him to pay the debt at so many shillings a month, and if he does not pay owing to more improvidence or more misfortune, and it is shown that he has had, since the day the order was made, any means by which he could have paid, then he goes to gaol. At least, he ought to go to gaol, according to law, but it must be sorrowfully admitted that County Court Judges, being human beings, generally give him further time to