HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS 



it. " Once the bear lost his grip and rolled over dur- 

 ing the course of some movement, and this made 

 him angry and he struck the carcass a savage 

 whack, just as a pettish child will strike a table 

 against which it has knocked itself." Who does 

 not recognize that trait in himself : the disposition 

 to vent one's anger upon inanimate things — upon 

 his hat, for instance, when the wind snatches it off 

 his head and drops it in the mud or leads him a 

 chase for it across the street ; or upon the stick that 

 tripped him up, or the beam against which he 

 bumped his head ? We do not all cany our anger 

 so far as did a little three-year-old maiden I heard 

 of, who, on tripping over the rockers of her chair, 

 promptly picked herself up, and carrying the chair 

 to a closet, pushed it in and spitefully shut the 

 door on it, leaving it alone in the dark to repent its 

 wrong-doing. 



Our blind, unreasoning animal anger is excited 

 by whatever opposes or baffles us. Of course, when 

 we yield to the anger, we do not act as reasonable 

 beings, but as the unreasoning animals. It is hard 

 for one to control this feeling when the opposi- 

 tion comes from some living creature, as a balky 

 horse or a kicking cow, or a pig that will not be 

 driven through the open gate. When I was a boy, I 

 once saw one of my uncles kick a hive of bees off 

 the stand and halfway across the yard, because the 

 bees stung him when he was about to "take them 

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