Beasts and Men

Excerpt from Beasts and Men: Being Carl Hagenbeck's Experiences for Half a Century Among Wild Animals Soon after I became Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, there called on me a tall, lean man, with a bony weather-beaten face, shaven lips and a short, grizzled beard of the kind known as a "chin-fringe." His shrewd and kindly face, slow speech with nasal intonations and general air of confident but watchful friendliness made the impression of an individuality very unlike the composite photograph I have in my mind of the Germans I know. But for the presence of a German accent and the absence of the tobacco habit, Carl Hagenbeck might pass for a New England ship captain. He is in the first place a business man with a, strong spirit of adventure that must have led him into many losses, and as he has none the less built up a great and successful business, it must be supposed that he also knows how to make profits. But those who deal with him soon learn that they may rely implicitly on his directness and candour in arranging a purchase or sale, and on his scrupulous carefulness in carrying out his share of the bargain. On one occasion, for instance, I had to arrange with him for the purchase of a pair of hippopotamus which neither of us had seen. The price was to depend partly on the age of the animals, but as that could not be proved, we agreed on a standard of size. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.