Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/609

Rh he can be relied upon to commit all the havoc a creature of his strength could possibly execute in five times sixty seconds; an instinct bordering on inspiration seems to tell him at the first glance where and how to perpetrate the greatest amount of actual damage in the shortest possible time. In a harbor-hotel of Cartagena I saw a mono whose terpsichorean talents had made him a more than local celebrity. He could dance the Moorish zameca, besides the bolero and fandango, and was sometimes released at the request of his admirers, who pitied his constant collisions with the lock of his drag-chain; but on such occasions the landlady used to charge a real extra, for even her presence did not prevent the mono from indulging his ruling passion. Under pretext of returning the caresses of his visitors, he managed to abstract their buttons, upset a flower-pot or two, or interrupted his performances to make a grab at a litter of poodle puppies on the veranda. His scar-covered skull proved that the lot of the transgressor is hard; but the



depilated condition of his neck was owing to a peculiar trick of his, as the posadera explained it. He would hug a post near his couch under the veranda, and, stretching his head back and his tongue out, would twist his neck to and fro, as if in the agonies of strangulation.