There is the angry droning of bees.
"What I mean is this: houses with fireplaces and pots and pans and what not. None of us will deny," he finishes lamely, "the enormous progress of man."
"I deny it," the lion stormed. "Can I forget the great black armies of the South, the glistening men with the silver armlets and the short keen spears? Not even of me were they afraid, those! Their drums resounded through veldt and plain, They asked only of the earth what they needed for their good. And when they hunted they hunted fair. They matched their strength against our speed. And their knowledge against our knowledge. And at night they sang and they danced beneath the moon.
"And now they are farm servants to the men who come overseas. They are not clean, as they once were. Their bodies that once were naked and glistening are caked with mud and covered with rags. And some of them are driven into the bowels of the earth, and the sunlight and the moonlight they were born to is kept from them. And they dig diamonds for men who are not satisfied with the luster of stars. And they who once fought me in the open with a spear now skulk with a gun."
"I remember an India that was," the tiger snarled, "a land of rajahs and temples, of brown dancing girls and men who played little flutes. They grew the green sugar-cane, and cotton they might spin on great wooden wheels. And their smiths hammered brass into strange antique shapes. And they worshiped God with singing and dancing in cool temples.
"What are the rajahs now, that once were the wonder of the earth, but little helot princes? And the ranees—the cinnamon-colored queens with the minute silver bells upon their bud-like toes—but despised native women? Are the bazaars filled with the quaint work of smiths? No, but with the meretricious trinkets of the West. And black-coated men seek to turn them from native immemorial gods. And the machine that throws pictures the mummers make, fights against the music and the dancing and the temple bells.
"The beauty I stand for is passing away."
"In Burma, whence I come," said the elephant, "there are jungles deeper than the jungle of Africa, or the Indian jungles. Great mossy trees, and painted flowers, and great brown rivers rolling to the sea. And the men there are beautiful as women, and the women beautiful as flowers.
"And once they paddled down the great brown river in glistening black canoes. They wore great gaudy sashes and had a flower in their teeth or a flower in their hair. Under the shadow of the great trees they paddled. And when they saw me they made reverence, saying, 'Our lord, the elephant!' On little reeds they made sweet, plaintive music.
"And now the great ancient trees are being cut down, and floated on the bosom of the hurt brown rivers. And the peace of the jungle is disturbed with the cough of the motor-boat, and oil is heavy on the warm jungle smells. And the men, beautiful as women, are clothed in soiled white garments; the rounded child-like bodies of the brown women chafe under a huddle of clothes. And when I am observed, the white man asks, demands, the help of the little brown men to hunt me, to whom they once did reverence, and I seem to hear no more sweet, plaintive music.