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The lion, whose voracious jaw opens like the door of an oven, so that the tamers of wild beasts have no scruple in thrusting in their whole heads, a mouthful a good deal larger than an apple; the lion, who has no doctors, would often be liable to this accident an irremediable one in his case if nature had not made a special provision for him.
At the entrance of the trio the chatter ceased and the cowboys stared at the two Eastern boys with undisguised interest. "Boys, these are the famous cowboy tamers, Larry and Tom Alden," said Horace, bowing in feigned deference and indicating his friends with a wave of his hand. "Don't be afraid, though. We won't try our hands on you unless you get gay with us," declared Larry seriously.
So when they had armed themselves on either side in the throng, they strode between Trojans and Achaians, fierce of aspect, and wonder came on them that beheld, both on the Trojans tamers of horses and on the well-greaved Achaians. Then took they their stand near together in the measured space, brandishing their spears in wrath each against other.
The tamer entered by the little door in a corner, with the celerity which all tamers employ, and stood for a moment in the statuesque immobility to which they are also given, in coming before the public. Having done this, he started forward with the black rod in his left hand, approached the animals, driving them to the end of the cage, the end of the rod nearly touching their faces.
Being the head of a family, Blake now, as was proper, went into "society." And what a society it was to enter! And what a man was Blake to enter it! The society of President Reynolds, and Mr. Mason the poet, and Mr. Sheridan the play-actor, and pompous Dr. Burney, and abstract Dr. Delap, all honorable men; a society that was dictated to by Dr. Johnson, and delighted by Edmund Burke, and sneered at by Horace Walpole, its untiring devotee: a society presided over by Mrs. Montagu, whom Dr. Johnson dubbed Queen of the Blues; Mrs. Carter, borrowing, by right of years, her matron's plumes; Mrs. Chapone, sensible, ugly, and benevolent; the beautiful Mrs. Sheridan; the lively, absurd, incisive Mrs. Cholmondeley; sprightly, witty Mrs. Thrale; and Hannah More, coiner of guineas, both as saint and sinner: a most piquant, trenchant, and entertaining society it was, and well might be, since the bullion of genius was so largely wrought into the circulating medium of small talk; but a society which, from sheer lack of vision, must have entertained its angels unawares. Such was the current which caught up this simple-hearted painter, this seer of unutterable things, this "eternal child," caught him up only to drop him, with no creditable, but with very credible haste. As a lion, he was undoubtedly thrice welcome in Rathbone Place; but when it was found that the lion would not roar there gently, nor be bound by their silken strings, but rather shook his mane somewhat contemptuously at his would-be tamers, and kept, in their grand saloons, his freedom of the wilderness, he was straightway suffered to return to his fitting solitudes. One may imagine the consternation that would be caused by this young fellow turning to Mrs. Carter, whose "talk was all instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions
It must be noticed that the process of transforming beasts into citizens was one to which only the tamed, but not the tamers, were subjected. The ruler stood outside of and above the rule he made. The law was for his subjects. This was the case with Henry VIII at the acme of civilization as it had been with the first of the Pharaohs.
"Young man," he said sharply, "I don't like the way you look at me. Stop! Not a word, sir! I have taken up the show business seriously. I find that our animal tamers are entirely competent. What we need here is a tamer for vicious and ungentle bipeds. There is a way to tame them, just as there is a way to break the spirit of the lion or the tiger.
So I goes on, "McCabe's my name; but among friends I'm gen'rally known as Shorty." "The best of credentials!" says he. "Then hail, Shorty, and welcome to the Free Brotherhood of Ego Tamers!" I shakes my head puzzled. "Now I've lost you," says I. "If it's a comedy line, shoot it." "Ah, but it's only tragedy," says Alvin, "the original tragedy of man. See how its blight rests on these around us!
You know all about the Psylli, or ancient serpent tamers, I suppose. Savary gives an account of the modern serpent-tamers in his "Letters on Egypt." I am afraid I cannot throw much light on "Christabel" or "Lamia" by any criticism I can offer. Geraldine, in the former, seems to be simply a malignant witch-woman with the evil eye, but with no absolute ophidian relationship.
But Apollo looked down from Pergamos, and had indignation, and with a shout called to the Trojans: "Arise, ye Trojans, tamers of horses; yield not to the Argives in fight; not of stone nor iron is their flesh, that it should resist the piercing bronze when they are smitten. Moreover Achilles, son of Thetis of the fair tresses, fighteth not, but amid the ships broodeth on his bitter anger."
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