Page:Under the Sun.djvu/30

8 secrecy, like the Lama of Thibet or the Unseen God of the Tartars. Yet there are those who dispute the weird majesty of the hidden potentate, for the whales, to north and south, enjoy a limited sovereignty, while all along the belt of the tropics the pirate sharks scourge the sea-folk as they will.

Even this, after all, is too narrow a view of the wild world. And I find myself, catholic as I am in my regard for the things in fur and feathers, offending very often against the dignity of beasts and birds. How easy it is, for instance, to misunderstand the animals; to think the worse of the bear for sulking, when it is only weary of seeking explanation for its captivity; to quarrel with the dulness of a caged fish-hawk that sits dreaming of spring-time among the crags that overlook Lake Erie. Remember the geese of Apfel, and take the moral of their story to heart. I have told it before, I know, but morals are never obsolete.

A farmer’s wife had been making some cherry brandy; but as she found, during the process, that the fruit was unsound, she threw the whole mess out into the yard, and, without looking to see what followed, shut down the window.

Now, as it fell out, a party of geese, good fellows all of them, happened to be waddling by at the time, and, seeing the cherries trundling about, at once investigated them. The preliminary inquiry proving satisfactory, these misguided poultry set to and swallowed the whole lot. “No heeltaps” was the order of the carouse ; and so they finished all the cherries off at one sitting, so to speak.

The effect of the spirituous fruit was soon apparent, for on trying to make the gate which led from the scene