Jocko was hardly more than a baby monkey, but he was so full of
mischief that he often made his mother very sad. Jocko's father used
to get angry with him; sometimes he used to give Jocko a good
spanking; only he hadn't a slipper as the father of little boys have!
Jocko's father and mother used to try to teach him that it was very
bad manners to snatch any thing from the visitors who came up to the
cage. That was a very hard lesson for Jocko to learn. One day he
snatched a pair of spectacles from an old lady, who was looking into
the cage and laughing; the old lady screamed with fright. Jocko tried
to put the spectacles on himself; but the keeper made him give them
up. When the old lady got her glasses again, she didn't care to look
at the monkeys any more.
Another day Jocko was taken very sick; he laid down in one corner of
the cage, and could not be made to move. His mother thought he was
going to die, and she was quite sure that some of his monkey cousins
had hurt him. "Not so," chattered Jocko's father, "I found some pieces
of gloves among the hay; I think the bad fellow has snatched them from
somebody, and partly eaten them."
"Dear, dear," chattered mother monkey, "I think you are right." When
she turned Jocko over, he was so afraid of being punished, that he
pretended to be fast asleep; but he heard all that his father and
mother had said, and knew that they guessed right.
"They're just like boys," said George Bliss one day, as he stood
looking at the monkeys in Central park. George is a boy, and he ought
to know. But there is a great difference after all. Boys can learn,
better than monkeys, not to get into mischief, and bother their
parents, and other people who come where they are. Some boys do not
behave better than monkeys.
[Illustration: A MISCHIEVOUS MONKEY.]