How Animals Talk 



silently between the actor and one of his audience ; 

 for presently, though I never spoke to the old man, 

 but only watched him keenly, he picked me out 

 for personal attention. Whereupon I cultivated 

 his acquaintance, invited him to dine and fed him 

 like a duke, and thought I had gained his confi- 

 dence by taking him to see a big wolf of mine that 

 might well have puzzled any student of birds or 

 beasts. The wolf was one of a wild pack that had 

 recently arrived at the zoo from Siberia, where 

 they had been caught in a pit and shipped away 

 with all their savagery in them. Through some 

 freak of nature this one wolf had attached himself 

 to me, like a lost dog ; by some marv,elously subtle 

 perception he would recognize my coming at a 

 distance, even in a holiday crowd, and would 

 thrust his grim muzzle against the bars of his cage 

 to howl or roar till I came and stretched out a hand 

 to him, though he was as wild and "slinky" as the 

 rest of the pack to everybody else, even to the 

 keeper who fed him. That interested the sparrow- 

 tamer, of course; but he was silent or tocKgarrulous 

 whenever I approached the thing I wanted to 

 know. He would not tell me how he won the 

 birds, but made a mystery and hocus-pocus of 

 the natural gift by which he earned a precarious 

 living. 



The same "mystery" cropped out later, amid 

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