On July 22nd we wrote of the lady Indian elephant
at the Zoo who has been shaming her sex by refusing to work. A mahout was cabled for, and a few days after his arrival proceeded to tame the shrewish creature by a combined course of soothing, patting, and Hindustani. The elephant is now completely mollified, and has resumed her duties of carrying passengers. Recently the Observer published an interview with the mahout that reads like a story from Kipling. Since the age of thirteen he has hunted elephants, and has helped to train as many as twenty in one year. An elephant during the course of its six or seven months training has as many masters, so it seems, as a public-school boy. There the comparison ends, for an elephant, unlike a public-school boy, will sometimes tear and trample his master to pieces. The great secret of elephant training is to ingratiate oneself with the animal. The mahout has seemingly to lick the dust at the animal's feet. Any hasty step before he has obtained the creature's confidence will make the elephant only more obstinate, with disastrous results.
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