148 



FOUR-HANDED FOLK. 



The love and devotion of the monkey to his 

 human friend is to me no less strange than 

 it is touching. If gently treated, our four- 

 handed brothers would live with us contentedly, 

 and I believe could be trained to serve us as 

 faithfully as the dog. 



The heart's delight of my black-handed friend 

 was a hammock, of proper size for her, wdiich 

 swung under the roof close to ours. N More than 

 half the long, quiet hours of the day were passed 

 in that comfortable lounging place, one long, 

 thin leg hanging out to keep her in motion ; and 

 so intelligent was she that, while everything else 

 that her mischief-loving fingers touched was re- 

 duced to rags, the hammock never received the 

 smallest injury. Strange to say, however, she 

 never slept in it, and the monkey-fashion of 

 sleeping is very different from that of man. 

 She slept in a ball, sitting on her three-inch 

 pole, held by a turn or two of her prehensile 

 tail, her knees drawn up, and her face and nose 

 buried in the fur between them. How she could 

 breathe is a mystery, and why she did not fall off 

 it is impossible to guess. The affectionate beast 

 did not, to be sure, scorn a human bed, provided 

 she could have a human bedfellow. Nothing 

 pleased her better, in the hottest night, than 

 snuggling up to somebody ; and when — on rare 

 occasions — she succeeded in freeing herself at 



