Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1884 — Strange Playfellows. [ARTICLE]

Strange Playfellows.

The following account of the remarkable friendship between the elephant “Queen” and little Don Melville is taken from the article by John If. Coryell in St. Nicholas: “When he could just toddle, Don would run up to Queen with a chuckle of delight, and putting his white, plump little arms around her great brown, hairy trunk, would tug away with all his little strength, as if he believed he could pull that living mountain over. “And, strange to say, he actually accomplished his object, for Queen humored the little fellow’s fancy. Swaying and rumbling with delight, she would gradually allow herself to come to her knees, and finally to fall over on her side. And it was touching to see how all the time she kept her eyes lovingly on the beautiful baby, taking care that no movement of hers should even disturb him! “When she was at last prostrate,' Don would look around as if to say, ‘See what lean do!’ Then he would imitate what he *had seen the trainer perform. He would clamber and climb until he was on Queen’s head, and there he would sit, with the air of a conqueror. HPwas quite likely to thrust his little fist into the elephant’s eye or to swing his foot into her mouth, but not a motion would the patient creature make while he sat there, for she seemed to knew that he was not very secure in his high perch. “Sometines Don would carry his pic-ture-blocks to Qneen, and together they would build houses. Don would put on one block, and then Queen would take one up in hert nnk and put it in its place as carefully as if she had

been used to the game all her life; and when Don would kick the house down, as he usually did when it was about half built, his merry laugh and her thunderlike rumble were something worth going miles to hear. “It never seemed to occur to Don that there was anything odd in his companionship with the gigantic creature; and had it entered his Uttle head to do so, there is no doubt that he would have proposed a walk in the fields with her, with as much innocence as if she had been a small dog.”