"Today we do not have an aversion to very much. We are a bit dulled to events and it seems that we see none too clearly. We are like Missus Mulrooney and the elephant. She had never seen an elephant and one escaped from the circus and the dark was dark and so was the elephant and at daylight it was standing in her cabbage patch eating cabbage. It was putting away a nice breakfast. She looked out and almost fainted. She dialed the police and said, 'Sergeant, send the whole squad!'
'What is it lady,' asked the sergeant.
'It's a great big animal pulling up cabbages with his tail,' she said.
'And what would he be doing with the cabbages, lady?' asked the sergeant.
'O Sergeant,' said Missus Mulrooney, 'you wouldn't believe me if I told you.'"
A passage from John Baskin's "New Burlington: The Life and Death of An
American Village," as an offering to Philadelphia's Cheers Elephant.