“It’s not the bread,” snapped the camel. “It’s the smell, and the low social status of the audience. I am going to seek peace and culture in another clime. I am not happy here; there can be no true happiness in a tent which smells of thirty-four distinct species, and penny cigars on the top of them.”
“Well, I hope you’ll find them—the peace and culture. I’m not much on pilgrimages myself, but I believe the first thing to do is to get started. Start away.”
“I will,” said the camel. So he wandered slowly out of the tent, and was fetched quickly back again, and tied up, and treated with ignominy. He tried it again on the following night, and was kicked till he was more grieved than he could express. He tried it a third time, and then the menagerie management sold him to a circus.
Now, at the circus, the camel was at first exceedingly proud, because he walked in the procession, and cab-horses shied at him; but afterwards he grew very lonely, for want of other wild beasts with whom he might converse. But at last the circus people bought an ostrich that was very cheap because it had consumption, and the camel’s heart was lightened. Now the ostrich was a great romancer, and told stories of passion and bulbuls, of rivers and deserts. And the camel listened to all these stories with glowing eyes.
“I once,” he said confidingly, “was going to start on a pilgrimage to find culture, but I was prevented. And after all it would surely be better to return to my old home in the desert and taste the sweets of domesticity.” Now the camel had been born in the menagerie, and knew nought of the desert, but he was nothing if he was not a talker.
“I shall lie under the palm-trees, and crop the cocoanuts; plunge into the hot white sands for air and exercise; and I shall take a wife, and she shall build herself a nest, and sit in it, and lay eggs in it.”
“My dear sir!” said the ostrich with a blush.
“And then my family will gather round me in the winter evenings, and we shall play round games, and go to bed early, and regularly enjoy ourselves.”
“When do you start on your pilgrimage in search of domesticity?”
“I shall start, wind and weather permitting, to-morrow at one pm.”