Dec. 5, Here is another economic freak of fortune. Owing to the eavthquake in Nepal and Bihar, ele-pliants are cheap to-day. President Roosevelt, smiling at certain, recent happenings, might be dis posed to assign another reason, but let the earthquake have it for present purposes. It is good news for many people who are now ron. dering over the diMeulty of purchasing suitable but inexpensive presents for Christmas time, White Jelephants could not be cheap at any price but their useful brothers: Vand sisters would be welcome in many a stocking. Maharajas and other potentates, troubled about the dire effects of economic stringency on their privy purses, will assuredly be cheered at the thought that they can replenish their stables without having to threaten boiling all for the immersion of recalcitrant treasurers. Ro-trenchment operations have compelled some high dignitaries to dispose of elephants because of the cost of the upkeep of those cere monial animals. The opportunity to recapture ornate magnificence at low cost may encourage them to go Into the elephant market again, Log rollers will be able to compete more satisfactorily with the grinders of axes and the pullers of wires, if they can enlist the services of the champion log rollers of the world on easy terms. There will be alarm and despondency in the select dwellings where reside those elephants whose main tole in life it is to wear the gaudy mask of decorative paint and to bear the golden, silver, scarlet trappings of the royal howdah, If they desire to indulge their arris tie temperaments overmuch, there will be the risk of supersession by some newcomer purchased in the present falling market. Nothing can be sulkier, or less inclined to genial conversation hat a superseded beauty of the processional elephant tribe, Economists may aver that this outcome of an earthquake is typical of the world to-day in its distraught state of shattered values. There are few animals which are as versatile as the elephant. In the pomp of the occasional procession he achieves the useful and ornamental by giving ponderous colour to the scene and. bby carrying the Great Ones to the Jassigned place of their epiphany. He is untiring in the field when there is hunting to be done. He has been used in battle and althougt. he has not yet figured in a. disarmament conference, who Knows what ingenuity might dis cover in his favour when charged to devise anti-tank preparations?
commercial enterprises, _whether as a hewer of wood or drawer of water, the lumberer supreme, (Continued on page 406.)
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.