136 The Poets Beasts. 



If they would only sit still a little longer and look me 

 fairly in the eyes, I should like to ask the monkey, baboon, 

 or ape some questions of which the solutions interest me 

 greatly. Why are they always so sad-faced, when evidently 

 the most content ? And where is "the missing link?" Is 

 it true that they speak among themselves in a lingua franca 

 of their own, and that under the impulse of hidden panic 

 they can articulate ? 



I remember once, in India, hearing at the Allahabad 

 Club of a monkey which in a frenzy of terror had called 

 out to its native attendant by 7iame. It had seen a cobra 

 coming towards it, and distinctly articulated its master's 

 servant's name — so, at any rate, more than one person 

 vouched for. Is then the tradition correct that monkeys 

 refuse to talk lest they should be made to work? 



*' Play at dummy like the monkeys 



For fear mankind should make them flunkeys." 



I should like, too, to ask them about the ape-faced men 

 of Tartary and the Soko and the Pongo, Susumete and 

 Engeena, and to get at the truth about Du Chaillu's gorillas. 

 But as they are, the monkeys are impossible in conversation. 

 They are too sudden, too unforeseen in their transformations 

 from sense to ribaldry to be rational, too furtive in expression 

 to be straightforward in reply, too fond of scratching neigh- 

 bours to keep to the point. What a curious community of 

 fur this is, by the way ! I know nothing like it, except the 

 unanimous scratching of Hindoo fakirs. 



They seem to me sometimes to be the " fatal children " 

 of the animal world, predestined to go wrong. They do 

 not, it is true, rise to the achievements of King Arthur, Sir 

 Tristram of Bevis, or Olga the Dane, Telephos, Perseus or 

 CEdipus, or any other of the famous " sons of sorrow," but 

 they often arrive innocently like them at great catastrophes, 

 their Kismet apparently leading them by the nose right up 



