“Very well,” I said; “I shall have patience. What I most need is advice about gaining the creature’s confidence and affection.”
The fact that I am a bachelor does not prevent my entertaining an extensive code of opinions on the subject of the proper rearing of children. The suggestions of Jerry Rhahob on the training of elephants seemed to me much the same that I would have offered a young and inexperienced parent if he had applied to me for advice about his offspring. Reduced to its fundamental principles, Jerry’s theory was that an elephant should be regarded as a dumb and deformed human being, possessed of a keen appreciation of right and wrong, delicate sensibilities, exceptional capacity and high character. From the mental and moral qualities with which Jerry’s conception seemed to endow this being, I would have accorded him a place in the human species, among the class that is said to be born and not made, the “genus irritable.”
One piece of warning he gave me in conclusion.
“The elephant knows as well as you do,” said he, “that he is an animal and you are a man. He appreciates the distinction. He understands that he is your physical superior, and that he could by a single blow of his trunk dash the life out of you. As long as he is kindly treated he will feel no desire to exercise that power. In the matter of intellect he appreciates that you are greatly above him, and will obey and serve you for that reason. Let him once get it into his head, however, that his powers are on a level with your own, and his arrogance will become insupportable. The relationship will be suddenly reversed, and you will find yourself no longer his master, but his servant. Several years ago I had a very intelligent elephant here in the yards whom I employed to build stone walls. He became marvelously expert at it, picking out just the right shaped rocks to fill the spaces with the best economy. The stones are irregular in form, and you can imagine that no small degree of skill is required. On one occasion he stood near watching me while I endeavored to teach a younger elephant how the work was to be done. I built several feet of wall, but the job was not a successful one—not, at least, when compared with what Budan could do. Whenever I picked up the wrong stone he gave a snort, and indicated a better one with his trunk. At last he could stand it no longer, and brushing me aside, took hold of the work himself, and soon had the young one taught. After that he made no secret of his contempt for me. I saw that he was ruining my standing with the rest of the herd, and I had to send him away.”
This story would have seemed quite ridiculous to me if I had not heard many others more wonderful pass current without question, and had I not often seen elephants employed in Madras at work which in America would be assigned only to artisans of considerable skill.
“Believe anything you are told about the intelligence of an elephant,” said a traveler from India to me once, before I visited that country; “the chances are it is true.”
I engaged an experienced mahout, or driver, an intelligent native by the name of Akbar. I determined, however, to make use of his services just as little as possible, in order that Ulysses might learn to depend upon myself alone. I attended personally to the matter of food and drink, and took pains that my protegé should receive no favors from the hand of anyone else. I soon learned the things that gave him pleasure, and put myself to no little trouble to gratify him on every possible occasion. I continued this process, combining with it instruction in such small services as “house elephants” in India are always expected to perform, until I saw that I had completely gained his confidence and affection. During this period of his tutelage, Ulysses would have trusted and obeyed me to any extent. I think he would willingly have laid down his life or endured torture for my sake. Nothing made him happier than to be near me as I sat under the banyan tree in my garden, smoking and reading. When I opened his stall in the mornings and called to him to come out, he fairly quivered with joy at the sound of my voice, and gave vent to his satisfaction at seeing me by shrill trumpetings. His devotion was annoying at times, and one of the first difficulties that I experienced was in teaching him to be less demonstrative.
It is a fact, which most readers of this narrative have proved for themselves by actual experiment, that animals may be taught the meaning of words. An intelligent dog, for example possesses a considerable vocabulary. I proposed to undertake a systematic course of instruction in the English language with Ulysses and to ascertain to what extent he was capable of acquiring our vernacular. Whenever he learned a new word I made a note of it in a book, and by constant review contrived to fix it in his memory. As soon as he began to comprehend what my purpose was, as he did after I had been laboring with him a couple of weeks, he became very eager to learn, and greatly increased the rapidity of the work.
The process of teaching him nouns was simple and easy. Each day I would produce several new articles, tell him their names, and have him hand them to me as I called for them. I taught him to say “yes” and “no” by the waving of his trunk, and made him appreciate that he was to use that means of signifying to me whether he understood me or not.
After I was well into the work, the morning lesson would go somewhat as follows: