A train of circus-wagons, strung along a dusty road, in the Santa Clara
Valley, crept slowly under the beating heat of a July sun. The dust
rolled in clouds over the gaudy wagons of the menagerie. The outer
doors of the cages had been opened to give access of air to the panting
animals, but with the air came the dust, and the dust annoyed Romulus
greatly. Never before had he longed for freedom so intensely. Ever
since he could remember he had been in a cage like this; it had been so
all through his childhood and youth. There was no trace in his memory
of days when he of a time had been free. Not the faintest recollection
existed of the time when he might have swung in the branches of
equatorial forests. To him life was a desolation and a despair, and the
poignancy of it all was sharpened by the clouds of dust which rolled
through the grated door.
Romulus, thereupon, sought means of escape. Nimble, deft,
sharp-sighted, he found a weak place in his prison, worked it open, and
leaped forth upon the highway a free anthropoid ape. None of the
sleepy, weary drivers noticed his escape, and a proper sense of caution
caused him to seek security under a way-side shrub until the procession
had safely passed. Then the whole world lay before him.
His freedom was large and sweet, but, for a while, perplexing. An
almost instinctive leap to catch the trapeze-bar that had hung in his
cage brought his hands in contact with only unresisting air. This
confused and somewhat frightened him. The world seemed much broader and
brighter since the black bars of his prison no longer striped his
vision. And then, to his amazement, in place of the dingy covering of
his cage appeared a vast and awful expanse of blue heaven, the
tremendous depth and distance of which terrified him.
The scampering of a ground-squirrel seeking its burrow soon caught his
notice, and he watched the little animal with great curiosity. Then he
ran to the burrow, and hurt his feet on the sharp wheat-stubble. This
made him more cautious. Not finding the squirrel, he looked about and
discovered two owls sitting on a little mound not far away. Their
solemn gaze fastened upon him inspired him with awe, but his curiosity
would not permit him to forego a closer view. He cautiously crept
towards them; then he stopped, sat down, and made grotesque faces at
them. This had no effect. He scratched his head and thought. Then he
made a feint as though he would pounce upon them, and they flew.
Romulus gazed at them with the greatest amazement, for never before had
he seen anything skim through the air. But the world was so wide and
freedom so large that surely everything free ought to fly; so Romulus
sprang into the air and made motions with his arms like to those the
owls had made with their wings; and the first grievous disappointment
which his freedom brought came when he found himself sprawling on the
field.
His alert mind sought other exercise. Some distance away stood a house,
and at the front gate was a man, and Romulus knew man to be the meanest
and most cruel of all living things and the conscienceless taskmaster
of weaker creatures. So Romulus avoided the house and struck out across
the fields. Presently he came upon a very large thing which awed him.
It was a live-oak, and the birds were singing in the foliage. But his
persistent curiosity put a curb upon his fears, and he crept closer and
closer. The kindly aspect of the tree, the sweetness of the shade which
it cast, the cool depths of its foliage, the gentle swaying of the
boughs in the soft north wind--all invited him to approach. This he
did, until he arrived at the gnarled old bole, and then he leaped into
the branches and was filled with delight. The little birds took flight.
Romulus sat upon a limb, and then stretched himself at full length upon
it and enjoyed the peace and comfort of the moment. But he was an ape
and had to be employed, and so he ran out upon the smaller branches and
shook them after the manner of his parents before him.
These delights all exploited, Romulus dropped to the ground and began
to explore the world again; but the world was wide and its loneliness
oppressed him. Presently he saw a dog and made quickly for him. The
dog, seeing the strange creature approach, sought to frighten it by
barking; but Romulus had seen similar animals before and had heard
similar sounds; he could not be frightened by them. He went boldly
towards the dog by long leaps on all fours. The dog, terrified by the
strange-looking creature, ran away yelping and left Romulus with
freedom and the world again.
On went Romulus over the fields, crossing a road now and then, and
keeping clear of all living things that he found. Presently he came to
a high picket-fence, surrounding a great inclosure, in which sat a
large house in a grove of eucalyptus-trees. Romulus was thirsty, and
the playing of a fountain among the trees tempted him sorely. He might
have found courage to venture within had he not at that moment
discovered a human being, not ten feet away, on the other side of the
fence. Romulus sprang back with a cry of terror, and then stopped, and
in a crouching attitude, ready to fly for his life and freedom, gazed
at the enemy of all creation.
But the look he received in return was so kindly, and withal so
peculiar and so unlike any that he had ever seen before, that his
instinct to fly yielded to his curiosity to discover. Romulus did not
know that the great house in the grove was an idiot-asylum, nor that
the lad with the strange but kindly expression was one of the inmates.
He knew only that kindness was there. The look which he saw was not the
hard and cruel one of the menagerie-keeper, nor the empty, idle,
curious one of the spectators, countenancing by their presence and
supporting with their money the infamous and exclusively human practice
of capturing wild animals and keeping them all their lives in the
torture of captivity. So deeply interested was Romulus in what he saw
that he forgot his fear and cocked his head on one side and made a
queer grimace; and his motions and attitude were so comical that Moses,
the idiot, grinned at him through the pickets. But the grin was not the
only manifestation of pleasure that Moses gave. A peculiar vermicular
movement, beginning at his feet and ending at his head, was the
precursor of a slow, vacant guffaw that expressed the most intense
delight of which he was capable. Moses never before had seen so queer a
creature as this little brown man all covered with hair; he never
before had seen even a monkey, that common joy of ordinary childhood,
and remoter from resemblance to human kind than was Romulus. Moses was
nineteen; but, although his voice was childlike no longer and his face
was covered with unsightly short hair, and he was large and strong,
running mostly to legs and arms, he was simple and innocent. His
clothes were much too small, and a thick growth of wild hair topped his
poll, otherwise innocent of covering.
Thus gazed these two strange beings at each other, held by sympathy and
curiosity. Neither had the power of speech, and hence neither could lie
to the other. Was it instinct which made Romulus believe that of all
the bipedal devils which infested the face of the earth there was one
of so gentle spirit that it could love him? And was it by instinct that
Romulus, ignorant as he was of the larger ways of the world, discovered
that his own mind was the firmer and cleverer of the two? And, feeling
the hitherto unimaginable sweetness of freedom, did there come to him a
knowledge that this fellow-being was a prisoner, as he himself had
been, and longed for a taste of the open fields? And if Romulus so had
reasoned, was it a sense of chivalry or a desire for companionship that
led him to the rescue of this one weaker and more unfortunate than he?
He went cautiously to the fence, and put through his hand and touched
Moses. The lad, much pleased, took the hand of the ape in his, and at
once there was a good understanding between them. Romulus teased the
boy to follow him, by going away a few steps and looking back, and then
going and pulling his hand through the fence--doing this
repeatedly--until his intention worked its way into the idiot's mind.
The fence was too high to be scaled; but now that the desire for
freedom had invaded his being, Moses crushed the pickets with his huge
feet and emerged from his prison.
These two, then, were at large. The heavens were lifted higher and the
horizon was extended. At a convenient ditch they slaked their thirst,
and in an orchard they found ripe apricots; but what can satisfy the
hunger of an ape or an idiot? The world was wide and sweet and
beautiful, and the exquisite sense of boundless freedom worked like
rich old wine in unaccustomed veins. These all brought infinite delight
to Romulus and his charge as over the fields they went.
I will not tell particularly of all they did that wild, mad, happy
afternoon, while drunk and reeling with freedom. I might say in passing
that at one place they tore open the cage of a canary-bird swinging in
a cherry-tree out of sight of the house, and at another they unbuckled
the straps which bound a baby in a cart, and might have made off with
it but for fear of arrest; but these things have no relation to the
climax of their adventures, now hastening to accomplishment.
When the sun had sunk lower in the yellow splendor of the west and the
great nickel dome of the observatory on Mount Hamilton had changed from
silver to copper, the two revellers, weary and now hungry again, came
upon a strange and perplexing place. It was a great oak with its long,
cone-shaped shadow pointed towards the east and the cool depths of its
foliage that first attracted them. About the tree were mounds with
wooden head-boards, which wiser ones would have known the meaning of.
But how could an ape or an idiot know of a freedom so sweet and silent
and unencompassed and unconditional as death? And how could they know
that the winners of so rich a prize should be mourned, should be wetted
with tears, should be placed in the ground with the strutting pomp of
grief? Knowing nothing at all of things like this, how could they know
that this shabby burying-ground upon which they had strayed was so
unlike that one which, in clear sight some distance away, was ordered
in walks and drive-ways and ornamented with hedges, and fountains, and
statues, and rare plants, and costly monuments--ah, my friends, how,
without money, may we give adequate expression to grief? And surely
grief without evidence of its existence is the idlest of indulgences!
But there was no pomp in the shadow of the oak, for the broken fence
setting apart this place from the influence of Christian civilization
enclosed graves holding only such bones as could not rest easy in soil
across which was flung the shadow of the cross. Romulus and Moses knew
nothing of these things; knew nothing of laws prohibiting disinterment
within two years; knew nothing of a strange, far-away people from Asia,
who, scorning the foreign Christian soil upon which they walked,
despising the civilization out of which they wrung money, buried their
dead in obedience to law which they had not the strength to resist, and
two years afterwards dug up the bones and sent them to the old home to
be interred for everlasting rest in the soil made and nourished by a
god of their own.
Should either Romulus or Moses judge between these peoples? They were
in better business than that.
Their examination of a strange brick furnace in which printed prayers
were burned, and of a low brick altar covered with the grease of
used-up tapers, had hardly been finished when an approaching cloud of
dust along the broken fence warned them to the exercise of caution.
Romulus was the quicker to escape, for a circus-train makes a trail of
dust along the road, and with swift alacrity he sprang into the boughs
of the oak, the heavy Moses clambering laboriously after, emitting
guffaws in praise of the superior agility of his guardian. It made
Moses laugh again to see the little hairy man stretch himself on a
branch and sigh with the luxurious comfort of repose, and he nearly had
fallen in trying to imitate the nimble Romulus. But they were still and
silent when the cloud of dust, parting at a gate, gave forth into the
enclosure a small cavalcade of carriages and wagons.
There was a grave newly dug, and towards this came the procession,--a
shallow grave, for one must not lie too deep in the Christian soil of
the white barbarian,--but it was so small a grave! Even Romulus could
have filled it, and, as for Moses, it was hardly too large for his
feet.
For little Wang Tai was dead, and in this small grave were her fragile
bones to rest for twenty-four months under three feet of Christian law.
Interest tempered the fright which Romulus and Moses felt when from the
forward carriage came the sound of rasping oboes, belly-less fiddles,
brazen tom-toms, and harsh cymbals, playing a dirge for little Wang
Tai; playing less for godly protection of her tiny soul than for its
exemption from the torture of devils.
With the others there came forth a little woman all bent with grief and
weeping, for little Wang Tai had a mother, and every mother has a
mother's heart. She was only a little yellow woman from Asia, with
queer wide trousers for skirts and rocker-soled shoes that flapped
against her heels. Her uncovered black hair was firmly knotted and
securely pinned, and her eyes were black of color and soft of look, and
her face, likely blank in content, was wet with tears and drawn with
suffering. And there sat upon her, like a radiance from heaven, the
sweetest, the saddest, the deepest, the tenderest of all human
afflictions,--the one and the only one that time can never heal.
So they interred little Wang Tai, and Romulus and Moses saw it all, and
paper prayers were burned in the oven, and tapers were lighted at the
altar; and for the refreshment of the angels that should come to bear
little Wang Tai's soul to the farther depths of blue heaven some savory
viands were spread upon the grave. The grave filled, the diggers hid
their spades behind the oven, Romulus watching them narrowly. The
little bent woman gathered her grief to her heart and bore it away; and
a cloud of dust, widening away alongside the broken fence, disappeared
in the distance. The dome of Mount Hamilton had changed from copper to
gold; the purple canyons of the Santa Cruz Mountains looked cold
against the blazing orange of the western sky; the crickets set up
their cheerful notes in the great old oak, and night fell softly as a
dream.
Four hungry eyes saw the viands of the grave, and four greedy nostrils
inhaled the aroma. Down dropped Romulus, and with less skill down fell
Moses. Little Wang Tai's angels must go supperless to heaven this
night--and it is a very long road from Christendom to heaven! The two
outlaws snatched, and scrambled, and fought, and when all of this
little was eaten they set their minds to other enterprises. Romulus
fetched the spades and industriously began to dig into Wang Tai's
grave, and Moses, crowing and laughing, fell to as assistant, and as
the result of their labor the earth flew to either side. Only three
feet of loose Christian law covered little Wang Tai!
* * * * *
A small yellow woman, moaning with grief, had tossed all night on her
hard bed of matting and her harder pillow of hollowed wood. Even the
familiar raucous sounds of early morning in the Chinese quarter of San
Jose, remindful of that far-distant country which held all of her heart
not lying dead under Christian sod, failed to lighten the burden which
sat upon her. She saw the morning sun push its way through a sea of
amber and the nickel dome of the great observatory on Mount Hamilton
standing ebony against the radiant East. She heard the Oriental jargon
of the early hucksters who cried their wares in the ill-smelling
alleys, and with tears she added to the number of pearls which the dew
had strewn upon the porch. She was only a small yellow woman from Asia,
all bent with grief; and what of happiness could there be for her in
the broad sunshine which poured forth from the windows of heaven,
inviting the living babies of all present mankind to find life and
health in its luxurious enfolding? She saw the sun climb the skies with
imperious magnificence, and whispering voices from remote Cathay
tempered the radiance of the day with memories of the past.
Could you, had your hearts been breaking and your eyes blinded with
tears, have seen with proper definition the figures of a strange
procession which made its way along the alley under the porch? There
were white men with three prisoners--three who so recently had tested
the sweets of freedom, and they had been dragged back to servitude. Two
of these had been haled from the freedom of life and one from the
freedom of death, and all three had been found fast asleep in the early
morning beside the open grave and empty coffin of little Wang Tai.
There were wise men abroad, and they said that little Wang Tai, through
imperfect medical skill, had been interred alive, and that Romulus and
Moses, by means of their impish pranks, had brought her to life after
raising her from the grave. But wherefore the need of all this talk? Is
it not enough that these two brigands were whipped and sent back into
servitude, and that when the little yellow woman from Asia had gathered
her baby to her breast the windows of her soul were opened to receive
the warmth of the yellow sunshine that poured in a flood from heaven?