Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/304

 a name as Cercopithecus callitrichus ought to command respect anywhere, but here it only excited envy and malice. When I found myself among all these strangers I was prepared to expect a few courteous calls at intervals, and that a few cards would be left where I should find them, but immediately upon my entrance the whole cageful called upon me at once, except the pig-faced baboon, who is always chained up. Their greetings were rather vulgar than otherwise.

"Hullo, here's another green 'un," said the Rhesus, intending this, I believe, to mean something beside my actual colour.

"How are you, old chap?" said another, pulling my tail away from under me, so that I fell forward on my hands.

"Can you fight?" asked somebody else, digging me in the ribs.

Then a big Chacma came along, and saying, "Got any nuts?" without giving me time to reply seized my jaw, threw me over, and forcing his dirty paw into my mouth, emptied my pouch of a little lunch I had brought with me.

After this I had to submit to other insults, but of these I will say nothing. My feelings were outraged and my tail was sore. My tail remained sore, indeed, for a few days, but I soothed my feelings soon after the crowd dispersed. I found a very small Capuchin, whom I had not before noticed among them, and—well, I let him have it.

But I found my proper level—socially a high one, of course. To tell you the truth I don't think much of society here; compared with what I have always been used to it is dull. Anyone can see that at a glance. Look at any of our cages; where is the life and motion proper in good monkey society? Nowhere. The humans outside think we are active and lively, but we who know what these things are know that our state is one of simple stagnation. Very few of us can now manage to be in more than five places at once, and we are even getting slow at that. It is a growing habit of laziness, acquired from the humans, who seem to have no business in hand but to stare,