The Cheyenne Daily Leader

Dahomey's Mounted Artillery.
The king of Dahomey received an invoice of
Krupp cannon not long ago and conceived
the idea of having them mounted on
elephant's backs for use in the field, says The
San Francisco Post. With much difficulty
this project was carried out, and at the next
military review the king ordered that one of
the guns be fired immediately in front of the
royal position, first taking the precaution to
place a couple of thousand of prisoners
about where it was calculated the ball would
strike, so as to judge of the effectiveness of
the shot. When all was ready one of the
biggest elephants was backed around and
sighted. Just as the lanyard was jerked,
however, the animal turned half round to
reach for a peanut or something, and the
shell took off the prime minister's head and
knocked a hole as big as a sewer through the
royal palace. His majesty wouldn't have
cared so much if the matter had ended
there—as the minister wasn't very prime and
the palace needed ventilation—but it
didn't. On the contrary, the elephant, which
had been stood on its head by the recoil,
picked itself up in a fury and started in on
the down grade ahead of its ticket. It upset
the grand stand the very first rush, slung the
grand chamberlain and past grand carver of
missionaries into the next street. It then
jumped into the brass band with all four feet,
and if it hadn't got the big drum over its
head so that it couldn't see, would probably
have cleaned out the entire congregation.
The king was not found until the next morning, and then, as he slid down out of a banana tree, he was understood to remark that there was only one thing needed to render his new artillery system an entire success—that was to get the enemy to adopt it.