A DEFENCE OF THE ASS 253 



of the jaguar, or his neck dislocated by the puma that 

 leaps on to his back. 



Instead of regarding the ass as a type and symbol 

 of human stupidity I regard him with affection as 

 of my kith and kin, for a better reason than Coleridge 

 had, since with him it was purely the Franciscan 

 feeling of pity and love. A being with qualities that 

 place him above all the other domesticated animals. 

 An incarnation of patient merit. Not the hopeless, 

 desponding patience of the conquered broken slave. 

 A slave with a heavy burden to bear for a thousand 

 generations, he has not lost the sense of the injustice 

 of his lot, the power and spirit to inflict blow for blow 

 on his taskmaster and tyrant when the occasion offers. 

 And that's the "hoof of the ass" about which we 

 hear so much from our intellectual, spiritual-minded, 

 uplifting preachers and talkers and writers! Even 

 now when writing this chapter I see in the news- 

 papers that yet another brilliant saying of that wise 

 man among us, the famous Dean of St. Paul's, has 

 been caught up, and is being wafted far and wide 

 all over the land. For wisdom is a rare and precious 

 thing, and we value it accordingly. We have left 

 the tiger and ape behind, he says : let us hope that by- 

 and-by we may find it possible to drop the ass's hoof. 



Original, as well as beautifully expressed! The 

 thought is always in some people's minds, and the 

 ape and tiger and wolf and ass are its symbols. 

 It has been spoken every day for centuries, millions 

 of times, in a thousand forms. I have admired 

 the expression in one form only, by a poet and 



