Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885

"Rich and poor, there's a sight of human nater about us all, though there ain't no use denyin' that some has more than others," remarked Cap'n 'Kiah sententiously. "And whether riches or poverty brings it out the strongest it's hard tellin'."

"I've always thought I might never have found out that I had medicle tarlunt if I'd been rich," said Dr. Pingree meditatively. The little man had "taken up doctorin' out of his own head," as he expressed it, after finding that shoemaking and tin-peddling did not satisfy his ambition, and was the inventor and sole proprietor of an infallible medicine, known as the "Universal Pain-Exterminator." The jokers dubbed it "Health-Exterminator," but almost all Welby took it,—they must take something in the spring,—and the little doctor, who had a soul far above thoughts of sordid gain, never expected to be paid for it, which made it very popular. It couldn't kill one, being made of simplest roots and herbs; and if one should be cured, how very pleasant it would be to think that it was without cost!

"Sure enough, doctor, mebbe you never would," said the captain. "And I suppose the innercent satisfaction you've got a-makin' them medicines is as great as you could 'a' got out of riches, and without the worry and care of riches, too."

"Not to mention the good done to my fellow-creturs," said the little doctor.

"Jest as you say, the good done to your fellow-creturs not bein' worth mentionin'" said Cap'n 'Kiah, with a grave simplicity that disarmed suspicion. "There ain't no denyin' that poverty is strength'nin' to the faculties."

"Don't give me nothin' more strength'nin than riches in mine," said Uncle Peter Henchman, who boasted great wisdom and experience, based mysteriously on the possession of a wooden leg. "I've been in this world up'ards of seventy years, forty-five of it a-walkin' on a wooden leg, and I hain't never seen that poverty was anything but a curse."

"You've got a terrible mistaken p'int of view, Peter, well-meanin' as you be," said Cap'n 'Kiah, "There's nothin' in nater, and, I was a-goin' to say, in grace, but what you clap your eyes fust onto the contr'y side, and then you're sure there ain't nothin' but a contr'y side."

"I wish I could see something besides the contr'y side of riches; but I hain't yet," said Miranda, with a heavy sigh.

Little Dr. Pingree cast a sidelong look at her, and then adjusted his cravat and considered the effect of the blue roses on his vest. Was a vision flitting before his eyes of the wagon drawn by gayly-caparisoned steeds and bearing in gilt letters on a red ground the legend, "Dr. Pingree's Pain-Exterminator, Humanity's Friend,"—of his own face, beautified by art, adorning fences and walls above this proud inscription, "The Renowned Inventor of the Universal Pain-Exterminator"? This fame, the dream of a lifetime, might now be purchased by money. And he had always admired Miranda.

Miranda caught his glance, and, with the suspicion which wealth had already engendered, divined his thought. Was there going to be another aspirant for her hand?

"The wind's a-blowin up; and what a roarin' the sea does make!" she said hurriedly, to cover her embarrassment. "The only thing I don't like about this house is its bein' so near the sea. It's rainin' hard; and I'm glad of it," she added, in an undertone, to Mrs. Bemis,—"for he won't be so likely to get round here to-night. Courtin' is real tryin'."

"The ocean is a dretful disconserlate-soundin' cretur," remarked Uncle Peter lugubriously; "and when you think of the drownded folks she's got a-rollin' round in her, 'tain't no wonder."

"The ocean's a useful work o' nater, and she's fetched and carried and aimed a livin' for a good many more'n she's swallered up," said Cap'n 'Kiah.

"I expect this world ain't a vale of tears, nohow," said Uncle Peter in an aggrieved tone. "There is folks that knows more'n the hymn-book."

"Well, it is, and then ag'in it ain't, jest accordin' to the way you look at it. There's a sight more the matter with folks's p'int o' view than there is with the Lord A'mighty's world.—Now, Jo, if you've got that cretur o' yourn into ship-shape,—it always doos seem to me jest like a human cretur that's got the right p'int o' view, that fiddle doos,—jest give it to us lively."

Jo tuned up, with modest satisfaction, and two or three couples stood up to dance. Little Dr. Pingree was about to solicit Miranda's hand for the dance, when there came a knock at the door.

Miranda stuck her knitting-needle through her back-hair in an agitated and expectant manner. But it was not the lank figure of the book-peddler, her betrothed, that darkened the door. It was a forlorn woman, dripping with rain, with two small boys clinging to her skirts.

"I suppose poor folks have a right to come in here out of the rain," she said, advancing to the fire and seating herself with a sullen and dejected aspect.

Little Dr. Pingree, who felt the arrival to be very inopportune, nevertheless gallantly hastened to replenish the fire.

The poor-mistress hospitably offered to remove the visitor's wet wrappings, but she shook her head.

"I want to find the relatives of Ephrum Spencer," she said.

"You'll have to go a good ways," said Cap'n 'Kiah.

"The graveyard is chock full of 'em," said Uncle Peter.

"They've kind of died out," explained Cap'n 'Kiah. "They seemed to be the kind that dies out easy and nateral."

"His uncle Hiram isn't dead, is he?" asked the woman, with the strain of anxiety in her voice.

"He died about a year ago."

"What's become of his money?" asked the stranger sharply.

"Well, there wa'n't so much as folks thought," said Cap'n 'Kiah. "He frittered away a good deal on new-fangled merchines and such things that wa'n't of any account,—had a reg'lar mania for 'em for a year or so before he died; and then he give some money to his housekeeper and the man that worked for him, and what was left he give to the town for a new town-hall; but, along of quarrellin' about where 'twas to set and what 'twas to be built of, and gittin' legal advice to settle the p'ints, I declare if 'tain't 'most squandered! But, la! if there wa'n't such quarrellin' amongst folks, what would become of the lawyers? They'd all be here, a-settin' us by the ears, I expect."

"And there isn't a cent for his own nephew's starving children?" said the woman bitterly.

"Ephrum's? Oh, la, no! The old man never set by Ephrum, you know: them two was always contr'y-minded. You don't say, now, that you're Ephrum's wife?" Cap'n 'Kiah surveyed her with frank curiosity.

"I'm Ephrum's widow."

"You don't say so, now! Well, there's wuss ockerpations than bein' a widow," remarked Cap'n 'Kiah consolingly.

Miranda had drawn the younger boy to her side. She was chafing his numb hands and smoothing the damp locks from his forehead.

"Why, how cold your hands have grown!" the child cried. "They're colder than mine. And how funny and white you look!"

Miranda had felt, from the moment when she first saw the forlorn little group, that Ephraim was dead, and yet the sure knowledge came as a shock. But this child was looking at her with Ephraim's eyes: they warmed her heart.

"She knew me, if none of the rest of you did," said the widow, indicating Miranda by a nod of her head. "And I knew her, too, just as soon as I set eyes on her.—Well, you needn't hold any grudge against me, Miranda Daggett. I calculate you got the best of the bargain. Ephrum hadn't any faculty to get along. I've struggled and slaved till I'm all worn out; and now I haven't a roof to cover me nor my children, nor a mouthful to eat."

Miranda sprang up, her arms around both the boys.

"I have! I have plenty for you all. And I've been a-wonderin' why it should have come to me, that didn't need it; but now I know. You come right home with me.—Mis' Bemis, you'll let Tready harness up?"

There were some objections made on account of the rain, but Miranda overruled them all.

She drew Mrs. Bemis aside and confided to her that she didn't want Ephrum's boys to stay even one night in the poor-house, because "it might stick to 'em afterwards." And she shouldn't really feel that they were going to belong to her until she had them in her own house.

So, through the driving rain, in the open wagon which was the most luxurious equipage that the poor-farm boasted, Miranda was driven home with her protégés; while Mrs. Bemis gave way to renewed anxiety about the fall tailorin' and Dr. Pingree heaved a sigh over his vanished dreams,—a very gentle one, he was so used to seeing dreams vanish; and there was consolation in having such an event to talk over.

Miranda's home was a rambling old house, and it seemed deserted and ghostly when they entered it; but Miranda kindled a fire In the kitchen stove and another in the great fireplace in the sitting-room, and the boys, warmed and fed and comforted, grew hilarious, and the ghosts were all dispersed, and it seemed to Miranda for the first time like home.

When she had seen all three cosily tucked into their beds, she went downstairs to rake over the fire and see that all was safe for the night. She found herself too full of a happy excitement to seek her own slumbers. Ephraim was dead; but he had faded out of her life long before; he had been nothing but a memory, and she had that still. He even seemed nearer to her, being in the Far Country, than he had done before. And his children were under her roof; hers to feed and clothe and care for in the happy days that were coming; hers to educate. What joy to have the means to do it with! what greater joy to work and save and manage that there should be enough!

Miranda looked into the leaping flame of her fire and saw brightest pictures of the future,—until suddenly she turned her head away and covered her face with her hands, groaning bitterly: it was only a blackened limb that, standing tall and straight in the flame, took upon itself a grotesque resemblance to a one-armed man. And Miranda remembered her affianced the book-agent. "Oh, land I how could I 'a' forgot! I've give him my promise."

To Miranda's Puritan mind a promise was to be kept, with tears and blood if need were.

"Oh, what a foolish woman I've been! If I had only waited till I found out what the Lord did mean by sendin' that money to me! He wouldn't stand the boys, anyhow: he's nigh and graspin': I've found that out. And I don't suppose I could buy him off with anything short of the whole property. I did think he cared a little something about me, and mebbe he does. I don't want to be too hard on him, but he was terrible put out because I wouldn't give him but three hundred dollars to pay down for that land that he's buy in' at such a bargain. I s'pose I should, only I couldn't help thinkin' he might wait till we was married before he begun to think about investin' my money. No, he won't let me off from marryin' him unless I give him all my money. Yesterday I had thoughts of doin' that; but now there's the boys."

The queer black stick had fallen, and was crumbling away, but it had crushed the last flickering flame. Miranda's fire, like her hopes, had turned to ashes.

She walked the floor restlessly, seeking vainly for a pathway out of her troubles, until she was exhausted. Then she slept a troubled sleep until daylight.

It was a little comfort to get breakfast for Ephrum's wife and boys, although she was so heavy-hearted.

She went across the field to Eben Curtis's to get a bit of fresh fish:

Eben had been fishing the day before.

Eben, who was a friendly young man, looked at her pityingly as he put the' fish into her basket. As she was turning away in unwonted silence, he was moved to say, "I wouldn't take it so hard if I was you, Miss Daggett. You're well rid of such a scamp. And maybe they'll catch him and get the money back. La, now! you don't say you hain't heard?" he exclaimed at sight of Miranda's astonished face. "They most generally do get the news up to the poor-house." Eben lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his hair with a mingling of sympathy and pleasure in being the first to impart important news. "He's cleared out, the book-agent has,—got all the money he could of folks without giving 'em any books; and folks say he got some of you. He's been in jail for playing the same trick before; and folks think he'll be caught this time."

"Oh, it's a mistake! He'll come back," said Miranda dejectedly, after a moment's thought.

"Well, he isn't very likely to, because"—here Eben turned his head aside in embarrassment—"because he's got a wife and family over to Olneyville."

Radiant delight overspread Miranda's countenance.

"I hope they'll just let him go," she said. "He's welcome to what money he's got of mine,—more'n welcome." And homeward she went with a light step.

"Women are queer," mused Eben, as he returned to his fish-cleaning.

"She's lost her beau and her money, and she's tickled to death."

"I declare, you look just as fresh and young and happy as you did fifteen years ago!" said the widow, with a touch of envy, as they sat down at the cheerful breakfast-table.

Miranda touched Mrs. Bemis's arm as she came out of the meeting-house the next Sunday, Ephraim's boys, preternaturally smooth of hair and shining of face, beside her.

"If it ain't perfane to say it. Mis' Bemis, I feel as if I'd got through the eye of that needle clear into the kingdom of heaven."

The poor-mistress commented upon the saying in the midst of her numerous family that night: "She's got that selfish, tempery woman saddled onto her for life, and she'll work her fingers to the bone for them boys, that ain't anything to her, and won't be apt to amount to much,—for there never was one of them Spencers that did,—and she calls that the kingdom of heaven!"

"It's jest as I always told you," remarked Cap'n 'Kiah placidly. "It's all owin' to the p'int of view."

SOPHIE SWETT.

* * * * *

THE SECOND RANK

A ZOOLOGICAL STUDY

It is a suggestive sign of our naturalistic times that so many first-class towns in Europe and America contemplate the establishment of Zoological Gardens. In the United States alone five cities have successfully executed that project. Travelling menageries have taken the place of the mediæval pageants. Natural histories begin to supersede the ghost-stories of our fathers. The scientific literature of four different nations has monographs on almost every known species of beasts and birds.

With such data of information it seems rather strange that the problem of precedence in the scale of animal intelligence should still be a mooted question. The primacy of the animal kingdom remains, of course, undisputed; but the dog, the elephant, the horse, the beaver,—nay, the parrot, the bee, and the ant,—have found learned and uncompromising advocates of their claims to the honors of the second rank.

Russel Wallace and Dr. Brehm have agitated the question, but failed to settle it,—even to their own satisfaction. The reason, I believe, is that the exponents of the different theories have failed to agree on a definite standard of comparison. The mathematical principle implied in the construction of a honey-comb, we are told, can challenge comparison with the ripest results of human science. The acumen of a well-trained elk-hound, a philosophical sportsman assures us, comes nearer to human reason than any other manifestation of animal sagacity. Elephant-trainers, too, adduce instances that almost pass the line of distinction between intuitive prudence and the results of reflection. Yet if those distinctions suffice to define the difference between reason and the primitive instincts, they should reduce the scope of the question in so far as to make it clear that, instead of measuring the degree of the development of special faculties of the animal mind, we should ascertain the direction of those faculties. Instinct tends to promote the interests of the species, and is limited to the more or less skilful, but monotonous, performance of a special task. Within that limited sphere its competence is perfect. Reason may be often at fault, but its capacity enlarges with practice, and the scope of its application is unlimited. It may be exerted in the interest of the species, of the tribe, of the family; it may devote itself to the service of an abstract principle or subserve the purposes of individual caprice. It differs from instinct as a piano differs from a barrel-organ. The pianist has to master his art by years of toil, but can apply it to all possible variations or extravaganzas of music. The organ-grinder can delight his audience as much by his first as by his last performance, but his répertoire is limited. Reason is indefinite, free, and versatile. Instinct is exact, but circumscribed.

Tested by that standard, the difference between the intelligence of the higher quadrumana—the anthropoid apes, the baboons, and several species of the macaques—and that of their dumb fellow-creatures is so pronounced that it amounts to a difference of kind as well as of degree. Borné, literally limited, but used in French as a synonyme of short-witted, is the term that best characterizes the actions of all other animals, as compared with the graceless but amazingly versatile and well-planned pranks of our nearest relatives. The standard of usefulness would, indeed, degrade the perpetrators of these pranks below the rank of the dullest donkey; but as a criterion of intelligence the application of that test should rather be reversed.

Watch a colony of house-building insects, their faithful co-operation, their steady, exact adaptation of right means to a fixed purpose, and compare their activity with that of a troop of ball-playing boys. Does not the gratuitous ingenuity of the young bipeds indicate a far higher degree of intelligence? Does it argue against the quality of that intelligence that any novel phenomenon—a funnel-shaped cloud, the appearance of a swarm of bats or unknown birds—would divert the ball-players from their immediate purpose? Monkeys alone share this gift of gratuitous curiosity. A strange object, a piece of red cloth fluttering in the grass, may excite the interest of a watch-dog or of an antelope. They may approach to investigate, but for subjective purposes. They fear the presence of an enemy. A monkey's inquisitiveness can dispense with such motives. In my collection of four-handed pets I have a young Rhesus monkey (Macacus Rhesus), by no means the most intelligent member of the community, but gifted with an amount of meddlesome pluck which often makes it necessary to circumscribe the freedom of his movements. One day last spring, when he joined an assembly of his fellow-boarders on a sunny porch, the shortness of his tether did not prevent him from picking a quarrel with a big raccoon. After a few sham manoauvres the old North American suddenly lost his temper and charged his tormentor with an energy of action that led to an unexpected result,—for in springing back the Rhesus snapped his wire chain, and in the next moment went flying down the lane toward the open woods. But just before he reached the gate he suddenly stopped. On a post of the picket-fence the neighbors' boys had deposited a kite, and the Rhesus paused. The phenomenon of the dangling kite-tail, with its polychromatic ribbons, eclipsed the memory of his wrongs and his mutinous projects: he snatched the tail, and with the gravity of a coroner proceeded to examine the dismembered appendage. If he had mistaken the apparatus for a trap, the result of the dissection must have reassured him; but he continued the inquest till one of his pursuers headed him off and drove him back to his favorite hiding-place under the porch, which he reached in safety, though in the interest of science he had encumbered himself with a large section of kite-paper.

On my last visit to New York I bought a female Chacma baboon that had attracted my attention by the grotesque demonstrativeness of her motions, and took her on board of a Norfolk steamer, where she at once became an object of general enthusiasm. The next morning Sally was taking her breakfast on deck, when she suddenly dropped her apple-pie and jumped upon the railing. Through the foam of the churned brine her keen eye had espied a shoal of porpoises, and, clinging to the railing with her hind hands, she continued to gesticulate and chatter as long as our gambolling fellow-travellers remained in sight.

Menagerie monkeys, too, are sure to interrupt their occupations at the sight of a new-comer,—a clear indication that monkeys, like men, possess a surplus of intelligence above the exigencies of their individual needs. Yet these exigencies are by no means inconsiderable. Unlike the grazing deer and the deer-eating panther, the frugivorous monkeys of the tropics are the direct competitors of the intolerant lord of creation. The Chinese macaques, the Moor monkey, the West-African baboons, have to eke out a living by pillage. The Gibraltar monkey has hardly any other resources. Nor has nature been very generous in the physical equipment of the species. Most monkeys lack the sharp teeth that enable the tiger to defy the avenger of his misdeeds. Without exception they all lack the keen scent that helps the deer to elude its pursuers. But their mental faculties more than compensate for such bodily deficiencies. In the Abyssinian highlands the mornings are often cold enough to cover the grass with hoar-frost, yet the frost-dreading baboons choose that very time to raid the corn-fields of the natives. They omit no precaution, and it is almost impossible to circumvent the vigilance of their sentries. Prudence, derived from providence,—i.e., prevision, the gift of fore-seeing things,—is in many respects almost a synonyme of reason. Physically that gift is typified in the telescopic eyes which monkeys share with a few species of birds, but with hardly any of their mammalian relatives, except man in a state of nature. Mentally it manifests itself in a marvellous faculty for anticipating danger. Last summer Sally, the above-mentioned baboon, contrived to break loose, and took refuge on the top of the roof. I do not believe that she intended to desert, but she was bent on a romp, and had made up her mind not to be captured by force. A chain of eight or nine feet dangled from her girdle, and she persistently avoided approaching the lower tier of shingles, to keep that chain from hanging down over the edge, but was equally careful not to venture too near the extremities of the roof-ridge, for there was a skylight at each gable. She kept around the middle of the roof; and we concluded to loosen a few shingles in that neighborhood and grab her chain through the aperture, while a confederate was to divert her attention by a continuous volley of small pebbles. But somehow Sally managed to distinguish the hammer-strokes from the noise of the bombardment, and at once made up her mind that the roof had become untenable. The only question was how to get down; for by that time the house was surrounded by a cordon of sentries. As a preliminary measure she then retreated to the top of the chimney, and one of our strategists proposed to dislodge her by loading the fireplace with a mixture of pine-leaves and turpentine. But better counsel prevailed, and we contented ourselves with firing a blank cartridge through the flue. Sally at once jumped off, but regained her vantage-ground on the roof-ridge, and we had to knock out a dozen shingles before one of our fourteen or fifteen hunters at last managed to lay hold of her chain.

The naturalist Lenz describes the uncontrollable grief of a Siamang gibbon who had been taken on board of a homebound English packet, where his owner tempted him with all sorts of tidbits, in the vain hope of calming his sorrow. The gibbon kept his eye on the receding outline of his native mountains, and every now and then made a desperate attempt to break his fetters; but when the coast-line began to blend with the horizon the captive's behavior underwent a marked change. He ceased to tug at his chain, and, chattering with protruded lips, after the deprecatory manner of his species, began to fondle his owner's hand, and tried to smooth the wrinkles of his coat, with the unmistakable intention of reciprocating his friendly overtures. As soon as his native coast had faded out of view he had evidently recognized the hopelessness of an attempt at escape. He realized the fact that he had to accept the situation, and, becoming alarmed at the possible consequences of his refractory violence, he concluded that it was the safest plan to conciliate the good will of his jailer. From analogous observations I can credit the account in all its details, and I believe that the conduct of the captive four-hander can be traced to a mental process as utterly beyond the brain-scope of a horse, a dog, or an elephant as a problem in spherical trigonometry.