Six Frightened Lions

1901

An incident at the Porte St. Martin theater in Paris has become part of the annals of the show business. The chief feature of the exhibition was a "turn" consisting of the casting of a young woman securely bound into a cage of lions heralded as being the fiercest and most bloodthirsty of man eaters.

The woman who had the part of the victim was taken ill, and a substitute was found in the wife of one of the trainers, herself a trainer of some experience, but without any acquaintance with these particular six lions, as she was somewhat nervous she carried a small club ready for use should occasion arise.

Amid the breathless silence of the spectators the ringmaster explained the ferocious nature of the lions and the terrible risk of the woman and she was thrust in at the cage door. In the excitement of the occasion the door was not securely shut after her. No sooner was she fairly inside than the six monarchs of the jungle, seeing that a strange person had been forced upon them, raised a chorus of shuddering terror, bolted for the cage door, clawed it open and with dragging tails and cringing flanks fled out through a rear entrance and found refuge in a cellar, whence they were dislodged only after great difficulty.

It was a week before the "ferocious man eaters" were sufficiently recovered from their terrors to reappear in public. — McClure's Magazine.