Gordon lives in Harlem, and he
recognises clearly enough that the only elephant-bearing jungle in the
neighbourhood is Central Park, whence an animal would be compelled to
take a Subway train to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and lie in
wait for him as he came home in the twilight. But irrational or no,
there was the fact. To be quashed into pulp under one of those
girder-like front legs, Gordon felt must be abominable. To make matters
worse, Gordon has a young son who insists on being taken every Sunday
morning to see the animals; and of all attractions in the menagerie, the
child prefers the elephant house. He loves to feed the biggest of the
elephants, and to watch him place pennies in a little wooden box and
register the deposits on a bell. What Gordon suffers at such times, he
told us, can be neither imagined nor described.
My own story was received with sympathetic attention. I told them that
the one great terror of my life is a certain man who owes me a fairly
large sum of money, borrowed some years ago. Whenever we meet he insists
on recalling the debt and reminding me of how much the favour meant to
him at the time, and how he never ceases to think of it.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25