The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney

it in the old book."
     "Well, my daddy claims the Bible's a mighty fine book," said the country lass.
     "The chimera," said Doctor Lao, "flies high on tireless pinions; so high, indeed, that mortal man is rarely vouchsafed a glimpse of him. Years ago, in the Asia Minor campaigns of the great Iskander, one of the Macedonian captains killed a chimera with his longbow. He took it back with him to the museum at Alexandria, and there, to preserve it for posterity, it was mounted by some forgotten Egyptian taxidermist. Years later, a monk from Tibet saw it in the museum and, on returning to his lamasery, made a statue of it in porcelain and set it out to decorate the yard. Still later, a Chinese, corning to that part of the country from the Northern Capital, saw the strange figure and took measurements of its proportions. Returning to his home, he fashioned another statue in bronze and presented it to Kublai, then great khan of all the Mongols. Then, when Kublai had the Tatar wall constructed in a square about the Northern Capital, he also ordered an astronomical tower built upon its eminence. In the tower were placed various instruments, yardstick arrangements for measuring the stars. And for the decorative motif to be worked into the design of these instruments, Kublai ordained that the figure of the chimera be used. This was done. Nowadays, one may still see chimeras in bronze writhing around celestial globes and holding in their claws celestial computing rods.
     "Other Chinese kings, coming there from time to time, saw these chimeras, wondered at them, understood their significance not, and went away thinking that somehow the beasts symbolized the power of the great khan. Then the petty Chinese princes commenced using the chimera motif themselves and had it worked into the designs of their own royal decorations. About that time the misleading name of dragon was coined to designate this royal emblem, and wrongly, of course, the dragon was taken to mean ferocity. But the chimera of Kublai was a benevolent beast, a patron of the arts of contemplation and study; and it must have been surprised when later it found itself spraddled on a banner, going to war.
     "Afterwards, when other lesser kings supplanted Kublai, one of them decided that his particular dragon should have five toes and that the dragons of other kings might have three toes, four toes, or even six or seven toes, but not five. A rival king disobeyed this edict, and war ensued. I forget how the war came out. You will notice that this chimera of mine, however, has four toes on his front feet and three on his rear, so the dogmatic king, if he supposed he had authenticity to back his claims, was very much mistaken. I never thought to count the toes on Kublai's chimeras in Peking, so I can't say whether the ancient sculptors were accurate."
     "Will chimeras breed in captivity?" asked the lawyer.
     "Oh, certainly," said the doctor. "They'll breed any time. This fellow here is always trying to get at the sphinx."
     "Well, that isn't exactly what I mean, though, of course, it's interesting to know. I meant will they reproduce?"
     "How can they, when they all are males?"
     "What? Are there no female chimeras?"
     "Not a single one, and very few males either, for that matter. You are looking at a rare animal, mister."
     "Well, if there are no females, then where do they come from?"
     "This one came from Asia Minor, as I already said a moment ago."
     "Oh, hell! I mean how are they born?"
     "Your question is unanswerable. No one knows the least detail of the life cycle of the chimera."
     "Could it not be that the female chimera, like the females of several insect species, is of an entirely different bodily make-up from the male and, so far, has not been identified as such by science?" asked the old-like party in the golf pants.
     "Science does not even