146 FOUR-HANDED FOLK. 



It is a curious fact that, to the homesick 

 dweller among strangers, a human being with 

 foreign tongue seems not so near akin as an 

 animal, whose nature-language is as intelligible 

 in Patagonia as in Podunk. 



My comforter and dearest friend in Nicara- 

 gua, said the same daughter of New England 

 who had owned Gila, was a spider monkey, and 

 the happiest hours of my banishment from home 

 were spent with an oddly assorted group of our 

 little brothers in fur, whose frolics amused, while 

 their fondness consoled me. 



The scene of this true tale was the court and 

 surrounding corridor of a certain girls' school in 

 the city of Grenada, where pets were as plenty as 

 pickaninnies, and grave and gay alike delighted 

 in them. Fancy an absorbed business man of 

 hurrying New York lavishing time and senti- 

 ment on a monkey or an armadillo, and conceive 

 — if you can — of a bustling Northern lady with 

 a tame jaguar at her heels, or a society maiden 

 bearing a tiny marmoset or squirrel - monkey 

 always on her shoulder. In that city of the far 

 south, these were daily sights which no one 

 thought of noticing. Nor was it many weeks 

 after I began my work of teacher before my 

 affectionate scholars had, for my sake, peopled 

 the silent court with a motley family of beasts 

 and birds. 



