At home in the world, wheresoever I be,
There’s nothing alive that is foreign to me.
I have another friend, who has also been foster-father to bears, and who is fond of illustrating the distinction between instinct and reason [274] ]by their infantile habits. However small the cub, he never needs to be taught how to bend and arrange the twigs, so as to give himself a convenient resting-place upon a branch. That, I am told, is instinct; and so, I suppose, is licking his paws, which comes as easy as breathing. But once two baby bears were attracted by the smell of honey to a wild bees’ nest up a tree. The bees came out with angry buzz and stings. The assailants were young, and had neither bee-hats nor aprons, and they retired, discomfited. Their kind master gave them, as consolation prize, some spoonfuls of honey on a plate. They licked it all up, and then looked at each other with surprise and animation, as men do who are realising something strange, as if saying to each other, and each to himself, “So that was the meaning of the smell we went to investigate.”
When the “brutality of instinct,” as the French call it, was thus reinforced by knowledge, they did not hesitate. “They did not pause to parley or dissemble.” Straight back to the tree they went, and up it, swiftly, steadily, right to the nest of the bees, and tore it open, heedless of the stings, brushing the bees aside as carelessly as if they were flies. They guzzled the honey, and came down slowly, licking their lips, only when it was [275] ]finished. Surely their foster-father might well be proud of bears like these, and say that they could draw inferences as well as an undergraduate.
In case any reader is led by this history to bring up a cub, let him remember to leave plenty of water in his tub in the bathroom. It is sure to be much appreciated in the hot weather. There is no prettier sight than a little bear enjoying himself in that way, with his two little hands—I mean forepaws—hanging over different sides of the tub, as he leans back. It should, however, be remembered that, not being equal to the use of towels, he likes to go to a bed and roll himself on the bedding when he comes out of the water. So unless there is someone standing by, there should be a waterproof sheet over any accessible bed.
These things are common to adolescent bears. The uniformity of Nature is an old discovery, and one of them is like another. As this is not a treatise on Natural History but a biography of an individual, I must restrict myself to what was peculiar to our heroine and her companion, and leave others to dilate upon what may be generally seen in her fellow-creatures of the same species.
2. UP THE CHIMNEY [276]
In writing as in living, it is easier to see what is right than to do it. The biographers of Europe would agree that their proper concern was only what was characteristic of their heroes, and not the details of human life in general. “In the abstract,” they would all agree to this; yet which of them does it? The difficulty is to discover what is distinctive.
If that is hard for a man who is writing about a man, it is still harder for the historian of a bear. If I were a bear, I would not have been puzzled to know whether the great adventure in the chimney was a thing to tell, or only what any bears would have done. Not being a bear, the writer could not ask his inner consciousness. He had to ask his friends who had bred bears; and when he found that our heroine’s master was the only one of them all who had a house with a chimney, the problem had to be abandoned as insoluble. So he has decided, like a certain great author, to take the risk of being tedious rather than elliptical.
The open-brick fireplace with a chimney was for heating, not for cooking; and stood in the [277] ]hall, near the front door. “I could never discover why it was there,” said the unfortunate tenant of the house. The building was an achievement of the Public Works Department, which is surrounded by mysteries and has ways past finding out in Burma.