The Fall of Ulysses: An Elephant Story

by Charles Dwight Willard

All this was easy enough, but to make him comprehend that certain groups of these peculiar marks formed pictures, which were to suggest definite objects to him, was a very different sort of an undertaking. The hitch in the proceedings at this point was so serious that, for a time, I gave up all hope of accomplishing my object. It seemed impossible to establish the necessary connection in his mind between the written characters and the spoken word. At last, it suddenly dawned upon him, and he learned (fatal omen!) the word “book.” The acquiring of one word constituted the test in my calculations. That point being gained, the rest was only a question of additional work and continued patience.

It was not long before Ulysses could write upon the board the names of most of the objects that had been used in his instruction thus far, and the verbs that I had taught him in connection with them. To combine these words into sentences was largely a matter of imitation, for he had already come to understand them when so arranged. In a short time we were carrying on long conferences, and the vocabulary of Ulysses had increased to the point of embracing most of the words used in daily conversation. With the establishment of this mode of inter-communication, Ulysses was able to explain to me what his difficulties were, and I could proffer more available assistance. I then, for the first time, enjoyed an intimate acquaintance with a brain that was not human. I could look into it and study its character and mode of action. I need not add that the occupation was a fascinating one. Our conversations, which were at first limited to visible actions and concrete objects, soon strayed into abstractions. The rapidity with which he grasped the analogy between seeing and thinking, and lifted himself out of the material into the metaphysical plane, astonished me beyond measure. He possessed an over-ruling sense of logic, keen and penetrating, and yet so swift that it seemed transfigured to intuition. But the most wonderful feature of his intellect was his memory. Now that words were supplied him, as tools with which to conduct his thinking, what were before mere vague impressions, became definite ideas, fixed and everlasting. I soon found that it was necessary to be absolutely accurate in all that I said to him, as he was quick to detect any inconsistency, and his memory covered the full amount of all that I had said since he had come to have command of the language.

For some time we conversed together every day, I talking or writing, and he using the blackboard. As print was too slow for practical use, I taught him to write short-hand. One day he made some inquiry of me concerning the novel I happened to have in hand, and I read him several chapters of it. His delight at gaining so much knowledge in so short a time was unbounded. I discovered that he regarded it as authentic history, and hastened to undeceive him. He was greatly shocked to find that anything could be said or written which was not true. This led me into something of a dissertation upon the forms of literature and the canons of taste. He listened with an absorbed interest. The bent of his mind was evidently not practical, but literary and artistic.

Ulysses’ fondness for hearing me read gave me an idea as to a means of freeing myself from the importunities for instruction and discussion to which he was now treating me, and which were becoming decidedly irksome. I sent Akbar, the mahout, to Madras with a letter to a French oculist. He brought back a large monocle which I had ordered made for the use of my pupil. There was a hole in one of Ulysses’ ears, drilled there by some former, less appreciative owner, through which I passed a light silk cord, allowing the glass to hang conveniently pendant. I had a wooden rack constructed by a neighboring rayat, who did carpenter work, which held the volume open and at the right altitude. Ulysses was now ready to begin his literary researches independent of my aid. Kneeling before the rack, in which he soon learned to fasten the book himself, he lifted the monocle to his eye, with the fingers of his trunk, and commenced to read. At first he proceeded slowly, and was often compelled to summon me to his assistance. After I explained to him the use of the dictionary and allowed him to keep one near at hand, this source of annoyance ceased, and he worked away by himself with a steadily increasing ease and rapidity.

There was one person who had observed all these proceedings with astonishment and disapproval. This was Briggs, the English gardener who took care of my place. I think he had an idea that I was violating the laws of the Church of England in some way, I scarcely know how. On one occasion, when I happened to be in Madras, Ulysses discovered, by appealing to him for the meaning of certain words and phrases, that all mortals were not endowed with the same fund of information that I happened to possess. No sooner did he find out that Briggs knew less about such matters than he did himself than he began to treat him with open contempt, slowly bringing up his eyeglass and inspecting him with cold hauteur whenever he happened to come in sight.

“That there helephant,” Briggs complained to me, “do treat me most harrogant, sir. I didn’t never expect to come to this ’ere.”

I spoke to Ulysses about the matter, and remonstrated with him.

“I cannot understand it,” he wrote in reply. “I asked the man about Schopenhauer’s Four-fold Root of Sufficient Reason to which I found a reference in a volume of essays by Frederic Harrison. He said he never had heard of any such root. Can he not read and talk as you do, and as all mortals do? How does it happen that he is ignorant of these things?”

I explained to him that only a small part of the human race was interested in affairs of the intellect, and that millions of men were still in the condition of unhappy mental blindness from which he had so recently emerged. He was aghast at this statement, but it did not tend to re-establish Briggs in his respect.