I
Jack and Murph were friends, old friends, trusty and tried.
It was now nearly six years since the day chance had brought them
together as members of the same company. Jack had come straight from the
African forests; he had crossed the seas, and set foot on the continent
of Europe for the first time; his amazement knew no bounds.
It is not for nothing a little fellow of his sort is torn from the
freedom of his vagabond life in the woods and surrendered to the tender
mercies of a showman of performing animals. He learned to know the cruel
tedium of captivity; shut up in a cage, he thought sadly of his merry
gambols in the tree-tops; his little face grew wan and withered, and he
came near pining to death. But time damped the keenness of his grief; by
dint of seeing around him other little creatures that, like himself, had
wearied for their native wilds, then little by little had grown
reconciled to their fate, and now seemed to get a prodigious amount of
fun out of their new life, he made the best of the bars, the tainted air
of the booth, and the clown’s grimaces, rehearsing his drolleries before
the animals’ cages.
At the same time he could never quite share the gaiety of his companions
in misfortune. While they were enjoying everlasting games of
hide-and-seek, scuffling, squabbling, pelting each other with nuts, he
would cower timidly in a corner, too sad at heart to join in their noisy
merriment. Sometimes, when his feelings grew too much for him, he would
break out in a series of sharp, shrill outcries, or wail like a new-born
babe in his doleful despair.
The master was very fond of him, for he was both intelligent and
teachable. In a very short time he learned to do his musket drill, to
walk the slack-rope, and use the spring-board. But these accomplishments
only earned him the ill-will of the other pupils. There was never a
prank they did not play him. No sooner had he cracked a nut, to eat the
kernel, than a hand would dart over his shoulder and snatch the morsel
just as he was putting it between his teeth. They slapped his face,
pinched his tail, scarified his head with their nails, jumped upon him,
or half strangled him in a corner, till a day came at last when his
master, noticing how he was bullied, put him in a separate cage all by
himself. But this loneliness only made him more unhappy still; he spent
his life in lamentation, sitting stock-still all day long, with his arms
hanging limp, and his eyes fixed on vacancy, refusing either to eat or
drink. This would never do; so they left him at liberty to wander at
will in the house.