There is an excellent man in Burma who is said to have lived many
years upon nuts; and an acquaintance of his told me he had been led to
the discovery that this was the ideal food, by the consideration that
nuts must be the staple food of monkeys. I suggested to vary his diet
by a regular consumption of ants. Charlie was very fond of them. She
would even pause in eating cake to pick up an ant if she saw one. I
doubt if she would have done so for a nut. She used to pick up any
ant, even the smallest, with finger and thumb with the utmost
facility, and put the prize between her fine teeth and crunch it.
My wife had an egg in her hand one day on the veranda when she was
talking to Charlie, who was sitting on the veranda rail. With sudden
alacrity, Charlie grabbed the egg, and, holding it with both hands,
tried to break the shell with her teeth. She failed. It is likely all
the eggs she had received from her mother in the woods had thinner
shells than those of hens, and so she did not think of using much
force. She turned the big egg round and round in her hands with looks
of astonishment; and then, in a business-like way, as if she knew
there was just one thing to be done, she broke it on the veranda
railing on which she was sitting, and guzzled the contents with such
gusto that she smeared her face and soiled her dainty fur with the
yoke. The next time she received an egg she was supplied with a saucer
to break it in; but never disguised her preference for the primitive
way of doing she had learned in the woods. So, to make her use the
saucer, my wife had herself to break the egg.
The plan of education adopted was in the style of Rabelais. "Do what
you like," was the first commandment. Or she might be said to have
accepted Goethe's gospel of self-culture, for she "developed"
diligently. She never was teased by any kind of collars, chains, or
bonds. There was never any restriction upon her, except that of
hunger, which tethers us all, and in satisfying her hunger she could
do what she liked.
While the house was liberty hall to her, and milk and fruit and rice
and cakes and, in short, the necessaries of civilised life were there,
the garden was in dry weather preferred, except of course at tea-time,
and at night. Of roses and orchids she could have said what the toper
said of beer--she may have had too much, but never enough. To be quite
candid, she eyed the opening buds as boys eye fruit. She seldom waited
till they bloomed fully before she ate them. When such visitors as
native ladies had natural flowers in their top decorations, they had
to be warned against Charlie's attentions. It was funny to see her
grave little face looking up at the lady caressing her, while the
long, lithe arm was reached furtively round to the top or back of the
lady's head, and the pretty flower there was deftly detached and
brought to Charlie's lips, without any pretence of chivalry.
One bad result of liberty, which happily did not take place, was
suggested by the sad fate of a common brown monkey in Rangoon. It
lived in the garden of a friend of mine, not far from the Scots
Church, and was quiet and respectable until it took to drink.
Everything was done to reclaim it, and it was on the road to a
complete reformation, when it unfortunately discovered, at the top of
a toddy-palm near where it lived, a pot into which a good deal of
toddy had run. It could not resist the sudden temptation, and drank so
much that it fell from the tree and broke its neck. It is well known
that baboons are often sots, and the little brown monkeys are at times
no better. Great, therefore, was my relief to see that Charlie, after
sniffing the wines and spirits in the decanters one day, showed
plainly that she did not like the smell. There were toddy-palms near
our house too, but nothing ever induced her to try the effect of
alcohol. In this matter, the saving clause, it now strikes me, was
that there never was alcohol on the table till dinner-time, and by
that time she was always asleep. The force of example is very great on
these little bits of men and women, a susceptibility of theirs which
is one of their most human characteristics. I once heard a man
boasting of having seduced a pet monkey into carousing with him, and
drinking beer enough to have a headache in the morning, "just like
master." Charlie was never so tempted.
Our house was an old-fashioned, comfortable wooden building, all on
one floor, and the floor about 10 feet above the ground, with a deep
roof made of wooden shingles. When Charlie decided to run away no more
she selected as her sleeping-place a part of the eaves with a
convenient view of the interior, and yet far enough from the wall to
be out of reach of anybody but a monkey or a bird. Unfortunately (for
themselves) our pigeons had deserted their own little house and
settled where Charlie decided to sleep. It was interesting and easy to
watch what happened. Charlie took what room she wanted, and ignored
their existence. For some weeks, I think, they lived together
peaceably. Then the birds discovered that their new neighbour was fond
of pigeons' eggs, and went away, not because they were meek, for
pigeons are pugnacious birds, but because they could not defend their
nests.
Another gibbon known to me in Burma was less fortunate in his dealings
with "our feathered friends." He was so young and inexperienced that
he treated crows as Charlie treated the pigeons, and was mobbed by
them to such purpose that long afterwards, when he was full-grown and
able to go with his mistress to the tennis-court, holding on by her
skirts, or hand in hand with her, it was a favourite joke of wicked
men to cry, "Caw-caw-caw." Thereat, in ecstasies of alarm, the little
man deserted his mistress, and ran and hid himself under the nearest
bush. Luckily for Charlie, there were no crows in our yard, only
pigeons, whom she could push aside with impunity. They accepted their
fate, and the place where they had lived so long knew them no more.
It was curious to see little Charlie, so weak that she trembled at a
dog if it came within reach of her, thus exercising the law of the
jungle, that might is right, on what was weaker still.