ADVENTURES OF AN OWL.
No one had expressed more indignation at Coldstream’s crime than
did Thud when the news of it reached him. The lad had never liked
his brother-in-law, of whom he had stood in some awe. Oscar had never
appreciated Thud’s wisdom, had sometimes rebuked him, and had actually
compelled him to work! Thud revenged himself now by calling Coldstream
a disgrace to the family, and declaring that he would never have
intercourse either with him or his wife. Thud destroyed two kind
letters which he received from Io, and scorned to send a reply. The
manner in which the youth spoke of Coldstream roused the indignation
of Smith, who was loyal to his old employer, and who called Thud to
his face an ungrateful puppy. It is not to be wondered at that Master
Thucydides Thorn soon quitted Moulmein.
Nor did he stay long at Rangoon. Thud did little there beyond selling
his watch to enable him to go to another place. We will not follow him
in all his wanderings. The poor lad travelled far and wide in search
of a field for his talents, but never seemed to light on the right
one. Thud wore out his stockings, he wore out his shoes, and he utterly
wore out his patience. Sometimes Master Thucydides Thorn had to carry
a porter’s burden before he could eat a dinner. Though his proud spirit
rose against begging, more than once Thud was driven to beg; but even
in this he had but slender success. Was it the world’s fault or that
of Thucydides Thorn that one with his talents should be driven to such
pitiful straits? Certainly the youth laid the blame on the former, as
many proud, foolish sluggards have done before. The world was blind,
hard, and senseless; it had kept a Worcester in prison, and persecuted
a Galileo.
For nearly two years this struggle with poverty went on. Thud had
grown thinner, sadder, and ten years older in appearance; but all his
sufferings had not overcome the conceit and self-confidence which had
been fostered in him from childhood.
At length, in one of the largest cities of India, Thud found himself,
as he thought, favoured by fortune, for he looked not up to a Higher
Power. Lingering sadly outside the gate of a kind of zoological
garden, more hungry than the wild beasts within, Thud’s eye fell
on the following advertisement fixed on the wall: _Wanted a keeper
who has some knowledge of animals and experience in managing them._
Thud’s experience was of a very limited character, but he believed
his knowledge to be immense. Thud at once went to the manager, and
presented himself to him as a candidate for the office of keeper.
The manager was a sickly man, with a yellow complexion which told of
liver complaint. Mr. Blane was very impatient indeed to escape for a
while to a cooler place; but the death of one of his keepers, and the
dismissal of another for having helped himself systematically from
grain provided for birds under his charge, had made it impossible for
the manager to get even a few days’ respite from work, however urgently
needed.
When Thud entered the room of Mr. Blane, the manager was by no
means favourably impressed by the appearance of the candidate for
the situation of keeper, and was at first disposed to bid the ragged,
hunger-pinched young man go about his business. But when Blane gave
Thud a hearing, the manager began to think that to send him off
summarily might be a mistake. Young Thorn had natural history at
the end of his fingers: he talked of feline, canine, and equine,
carnivorous, granivorous, and omnivorous as familiarly as household
words; he declared with such an air of conviction that he could find
ways of feeding animals and keeping them healthy at half the usual
cost, that Blane began to hope what he desired――that he had lighted
on a treasure. The manager asked Thud for his credentials; of course
none could be produced. Thud said that he was an unfortunate gentleman
of good family, who had come to Moulmein to make scientific researches,
and had found, like many others, that it was harder for a philosopher
to earn his living there than it was for a coolie.
Mr. Blane then inquired his visitor’s name.
“Thucydides Thorn,” replied Thud, with an assumed dignity which
comically contrasted with the torn state of his jacket, and his
shoeless, stockingless, blistered feet.
“Thorn! why, my grandmother was a Thorn,” cried Blane, “and it is not
a common surname. What part of England do you hail from, my man?”
Then followed a catechising about family names, dates, and places of
residence, from which the manager found out, without possibility of
mistake, that he saw a second cousin once removed in the poor barefoot
gentleman before him.
This was a delightful discovery for Thud, and was scarcely less
pleasant to Blane, who shook his cousin heartily by the hand, and,
without further inquiry, installed him in office. Thud was at once
clothed in Blane’s left-off garments, given his second pair of boots,
and invited to share his dinner. The half-famished young man was
disposed to do full justice to the best repast of which he had partaken
since leaving Moulmein. After dinner, Thud was introduced by Blane to
the limited collection of birds, beasts, and reptiles under his charge.
“They have been dying off pretty fast lately,” observed Blane; “the
last keeper embezzled money given for their food. The lion (alias
_cheetah_) did not get the lion’s share.”
“Of course you have preserved and stuffed the skins,” quoth Thud.
“Yes, yes; we’ve more stuffed creatures now than live ones, and they
give less trouble,” observed Blane. “You see this building to the
right? That is our little museum.”
Museum! the word was nectar to Thud. The bright vision rose before
him of a day when he should be not only keeper but manager――nay, more,
proprietor――of a museum, filled not merely with stuffed monkeys and
snakes, but with all the curiosities of the East.
That evening Mr. Blane started for his too long deferred holiday trip,
which illness obliged him to prolong from days to weeks.
Thud was at first in his glory, monarch of all he surveyed, “lord of
the fowl and the brute.” But troubles will come even to scientific
keepers of Zoological Gardens. A theory of Thud’s, that carnivorous
beasts may be trained to thrive on boiled grain, when worked out
did not prove a success. Thud wondered why animals, even when
scientifically treated, would sicken and die. They seemed to do so
on purpose to spite him.
The young philosopher felt a great want of companions. The Gardens had
few visitors, and those visitors did not appreciate Thucydides Thorn,
or the theories which he was always eager to propound. Thud was almost
thrown for society on a one-eyed discharged soldier, who now, as a
porter, kept the gate. This man, Colin Champer, was discovered by Thud
to be a remarkably shrewd, intelligent man. Champer won this character
because he was a good listener; he echoed every wise saying dropped by
Thud, having no imagination of his own, and gave implicit credence to
whatever his oracle said.
One day, after being for some time buried in thought, Thud raised
his head with a kind of scientific inspiration, for a new theory had
entered his brain.
“Champer,” said he to the porter, “how was the keeper cured who, as you
told me, was bitten here by a snake?”
“He had ammonia rubbed in, and had ammonia mixed with water poured down
his throat,” was Champers reply.
“And he recovered?” asked Thud.
“Yes, he recovered,” replied the man with a grin; “but the snake warn’t
a poisonous un.”
“Still, its clear that ammonia is the antidote to a serpent’s poison.”
“Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t,” said the man.
“And no one can deny,” pursued Thud, “that with every evil under the
sun the wise thing is to go to the fountain-head, the source.”
“The fountain-head, the source,” echoed Champer, without the slightest
comprehension of what the oracle meant.
“Now, what is the source, the fountain-head of a serpent’s poison. Is
it not the serpent’s fang?” cried Thud.
“Certainly, the serpent’s fang,” said the echo.
“Then my theory is, that if ammonia corrects poison in the blood
of a bitten man, it would be far more effectual, and economical too,
to introduce it, not into the wound, but into the jaws that might
inflict such a wound. Is not this self-evident?” asked the philosopher,
appealing to Champer.
“Self-evident,” repeated the echo, but with a very faint comprehension
of the orator’s logic.
“You grant this,” said Thud. “Then the sure way to prevent deaths from
snake-bites would be to pour ammonia on the fangs of the snakes.”
“If you could catch ’em,” suggested old Champer.
“We have four snakes in the case,” continued Thud. “No, I remember
that two died yesterday; but we have the cobra still. From this little
glass-stoppered bottle of ammonia I mean to pour some drops into his
mouth, and so render his poison innocuous for ever.”
“If the cobra don’t object,” observed Champer, grinning again.
“Here’s the case with its strong wire-work covering,” said Thud. “I am
going to prove the truth of my theory.”
Feeling like a second Jenner, Thucydides Thorn advanced to the case.
The cobra looked sleepy, and averse to experiments being tried upon
him. He would not be stirred up, even when Thud poked him with a straw
introduced between the wires. The sulky snake would not open his jaws.
Thud dropped a little ammonia from the bottle through the wire cover;
it fell on the cobra’s head and on one of its glittering eyes. The
reptile was thoroughly roused, swelled out his hood, and twisted about
in angry contortions.
“I have not managed to get the ammonia on his fangs yet,” cried Thud;
“but he’s opening his jaws wide enough now.”
The young experimentalist, holding the bottle ready, and eagerly
watching for an opportunity, bent over the cage. The reptile evidently
saw him, for the cobra darted out his forked tongue, and seemed ready
to spring; but Thud felt no fear, for he knew that strong wire-work
effectually imprisoned the serpent. But whilst the philosopher held the
bottle in his right hand, he unconsciously let the left press heavily
on the wires, which were not so close as to prevent a small portion of
a finger being exposed to the enemy’s attack. There was a spring from
below, a cry from above.
“Oh, I am bitten!” cried Thud, staggering back from the cage and
dropping the bottle.
“Then you are a dead man!” ejaculated Champer.
The prognostication was too soon fulfilled: poor Thud had received his
mortal wound, and expired within half-an-hour of receiving the bite.
His end was in character with his career. There was no epitaph over
Thud’s grave, or it might have run thus: “Here lies Thucydides Thorn,
a victim to his own theories, a martyr to science, of which he spoke
so much and comprehended so little.”