AN ANTHROPOID. 
221 
is forbidden, and nothing remains for him but to die. I 
feel for him, but I should like to feel for him wisely. The 
echo of all suffering, deserved or undeserved, should 
be sympathy, but sympathy, like some precious balm, may 
be applied to the wrong part, unless you clearly understand 
the disease. So I tried to diagnose the case of the poor 
Koonbee. I selected a dirty, little old man, whose mother 
had named him Yelleep and bequeathed him a pleasantly 
ugly face, with a genial smile, which quite lighted up the 
few reddish yellow teeth that still remained in his old 
mouth. I thought I might gain his heart if I translated 
to him the words of the poet — 
“Drops of compassion 
Tremble on my eyelids, 
Ready to fall as 
Soon as you have told your 
Pitiful story.” 
But I found that my acquaintance with the noises which 
he called his mother tongue was not equal to the task. 
So I put him a simple question, What did he eat ? He 
replied that he ate nothing ! How could he eat, having 
no food ? Further questions only served as encores to 
evoke a repetition of the same song. It was evident that, 
though his brain was like a London sky, one idea loomed 
