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Show Till: LATENT HUMAN WILD BEAST, There was a tragedy i l the tent of a certain wild-anaimal show a week or- t zo ago. A woman who had been in the habit of exhibiting trained lions was incapacitated for her business in a very few minutes. One of the lions, which had long shown signs of being unruly, leaped upon up-on her and inflicted serious injuries. in-juries. The element in human nature which makes such shows as these popular is not one of which we x have reason to be very proud. The exhibition of trained animals is not, in itself, anything demoralizing demor-alizing either to the spectators or to the trainer. The testimony of Hagenbeck and othrs is to the etfect that the trainer must, in order to be safe and success-1 success-1 nl, treat the animals with kindness, kind-ness, and to judge from their actions it would seem that they enjoy their work at least as wel! as they would enjoy being stared ;.t in idleness. ! B' Vine average expM--- wi er sort ofthing . The fiercer and more dangerous the beasts are, the more evident their resistance . of authority and dislike of their) work, the more the audience en-J . joys it. There would be no I :-oice in the affair if there were no danger. The beasts must be I beaten and cowed into submission; x the man or woman among them must be running the risk of be-insr be-insr torn by their teeth, in order t3 furnijh the requisite amount of excitement. It is the latent wild beast in human nature which delights in this sort of thing. The civilized man want? the vicarious thrill which comes i of looking on at a performance' which he would never have the sand to attempt, "t is the rex-nantof rex-nantof the thirst for blood which so raged in the Roman populaces 1 when they, likewise, went to the j circus and saw women and child- j ren torn by lions or gladiators in deadly combat on the bloody sands. It is no': in any phase of its recrudescence a nice thing, or V thing to be encouraged. |