Animals are awfully intelligent, but they haven\'t any souls. There was once an elephant in a circus, and one day a boy said to him, "Want a lump of sugar, old fellow?" The elephant he nodded, and felt real grateful, for elephants are very fond of lump-sugar, which is what they live on in their native forests. But the boy put a cigar instead of a lump of sugar in his mouth.
The sagacious animal, instead of eating up the cigar or trying to smoke it and making himself dreadfully sick, took it and carried it across the circus to a man who kept a candy and cigar stand, and made signs that he\'d sell the cigar for twelve lumps of sugar. The man gave the elephant the sugar and took the cigar, and then the intelligent animal sat down on his hind-legs and laughed at the boy who had tried to play a joke on him, until the boy felt that much ashamed that he went right home and went to bed.
In the days when there were fairies—only I don\'t believe there ever were any fairies, and Mr. Travers says they were rubbish—boys were frequently changed into animals. There was once a boy who did something that made a wicked fairy angry, and she changed him into a cat, and thought she had punished him dreadfully. But the boy after he was a cat used to come and get on her back fence and yowl as if he was ten or twelve cats all night long, and she couldn\'t get a wink of sleep, and fell into a fever, and had to take lots of castor-oil and dreadful medicines.
So she sent for the boy who was a cat, you understand, and said she\'d change him back again. But he said, "Oh no; I\'d much rather be a cat, for I\'m so fond of singing on the back fence." And the end of it was that she had to give him a tremendous pile of money before he\'d consent to be changed back into a boy again.
Boys can play being animals, and it\'s great fun, only the other boys who don\'t play they are animals get punished for it, and I say it\'s unjust, especially as I never meant any harm at all, and was doing my very best to amuse the children.
This is the way it happened. Aunt Sarah came to see us the other day, and brought her three boys with her. I don\'t think you ever heard of Aunt Sarah, and I wish I never had. She\'s one of father\'s sisters, and he thinks a[Pg 170] great deal more of her than I would if she was my sister, and I don\'t think it\'s much credit to anybody to be a sister anyway. The boys are twins, that is, two of them are, and they are all about three or four years old.
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading
