On the evening fixed, the Monkey who served on the Committee, and who had had the advantage of an intimate acquaintance with Mr. Hobbs, picked all the locks of Barnum’s Museum, and led the imprisoned animals forth. A boat belonging to the Staten Island Ferry Company had been chartered by the Jackass (a relative, as it appeared, of one of the managers), and by midnight the whole party had crossed the water without other accident than a rencontre with a party of police-officers, who, on being assured by the Parrot that they were all Democratic voters, let them pass without comment.
The Animal Declaration of Independence Harper’s January 1857 [edited extract being part two in a series of 19]
