In January 1909 a friend at Pyapon, Burma, told me that, as he was
passing through an unfrequented creek near the shore there, between
Rangoon and Bassein, the sudden apparition of his steam-launch alarmed
a crowd of monkeys. They were on the trees, overhanging the water, and
chattering loudly. They hurried away, with leaps and swings, quickly
and easily, all but one. He was a _very_ little fellow, and there was
a big gap in front of him, too big for him; and so he stood shivering,
about to fall. His mother saw his plight, and came back and joined
him. To take him was impossible. So she sat beside him; and he pressed
close to her and clung to her; and she put one arm around him, and,
quietly but with quivering lips, she faced the awful apparition,
whistling, splashing, puffing. It passed without hurting her or her
son. They suffered nothing but the fright.
"Very queer they looked as we came close to them," thought the men on
the boat; but their fear was as natural as that of men who see a lion
at large. It is likely, too, that that brown mother-monkey had had
losses before; and a mother's heart to feel them. Perhaps a memory of
old sorrows, dimly present yet, as well as something of the sublime
instinct which makes humanity at times self-sacrificing and brave, had
strengthened her heart enough to let her face the immeasurable dangers
of the noisy, unknown monster.
Instead of laughing at her ignorance, think of our own--how little we
can ever know of her or her tribe, how utterly undecipherable,
mysterious beyond any hieroglyphics, remain the lines upon her face
the "multitudinous wrinkled tragedies" upon the parchment of that
little brow! We pass each other close enough; but an infinite gulf
divides us, a gulf deeper than that in the parable: for there is no
speech across it, no signalling, no telegraphy of any kind. No
communication whatever is possible between us, any more than if we
lived in different solar systems. Only, we can see and admire in her a
mother's love, exactly as we can behold the flashing glories of the
kingfisher's feathers, or hear the merry music of the lark. The world
is not a nightmare after all.