382 TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE. 



with at least one band. The action plainly showed that he feared I 

 would play a trick on him by letting him fall. Presently, how- 

 ever, I hit upon a plan which conquered his suspicion. I made 

 him climb up to my shoulder to get the bananas of which he was 

 very fond, and, after that, a banana held at arm s length above my 

 head would start him to climbing my body as if it were a tree 

 tmtil the tempting bait was reached. 



He soon became very fond of being held in my arms, and when 

 I gi-ew tired of holding him, he would grasp the folds of my flannel 

 shirt and hold himself — quite an improvement upon the puny help- 

 lessness of human infants. 



Next to eating seven bananas at once, his greatest delight was 

 in sitting lazily in my lap while I sat reading, writing, or even eat- 

 ing, sprawling out his legs and arms, catching hold of my book, or 

 my penholder, or pulling at the table-cloth. 



Once while holding him in my lap at dinner, he suddenly made 

 a pass at the roast duck which lay before me, and had his teeth in 

 it before I could recover from my surpi'ise. On one occasion when 

 I sat eating, he leisurely cUmbed up the back of my chair, squatted 

 on the topmost round, leaned lazily forward against me, and rested 

 his chin comfortably on my shoulder. And there he sat all 

 through the meal, watching the performance with the air of a 

 connoisseur. 



For a long time he would eat nothing but bananas and sugar- 

 cane, and I was at my wits' end to find a way to teach him to eat 

 boiled rice. One day, however, as he was sitting in my lap while 

 I was at dinner, I noticed that his eyes followed the journeys of my 

 spoon with great interest, and it occurred to me that human beings 

 always want what they cannot have. Happy thought ! I began to 

 pass each spoonful of rice close to his mouth on its way to mine. 

 He soon began to open his mouth every time he saw the spoon 

 coming, only to be disappointed by seeing it travel on to his next 

 neighbor. From being merely wilHng to try the rice, he became 

 very anxious when he saw it was denied him, and a little more 

 tantalizing set him to struggling violently for the food he had 

 previously despised. When it was finally given him he ate it with 

 the greatest satisfaction, and thereafter, with the addition of milk, 

 it became his daily food. 



He also learned to eat with relish all kinds of cooked meat, 

 vegetables, canned fruit and bread, and to drink tea, coffee, milk 

 and chocolate, in all respects evincing the tastes of a human being 



