‘Are they goin’ to fetch us away?’ said the Colonel.
‘This vurry next day that is, Colonel; one of his boats will put in here and fetch me away with the whole of my bag o’ tricks to meet the Show in London.’
‘You’re mighty glad, eh?’
‘I’m that, sonny. But I feel sorter queer too. I’ve grown kinder used to this life, bein’ boss myself an’ all that. And yet, if you come to think of it, ... by Jelly, it’s the queerest thing of all. Me goin’ inter pardnership, as you might say, with an ornary ape! Hand me the matches, sonny—by my foot thar; this blamey pipe’s gone out agen.... Here was I an’ pore old Jabez dumped down by the Boss, to train some monkeys for his show. Whin Jabez took the fever and went over the range I began to be kinder lonesome; got a sorter hungry feel in my teeth with not speakin’. So I slipped into a kinder habit o’ talkin’ to you all like humans, jest to ease my gums. An’ all of a sudden, one fine day, Colonel, you bein’ dissatisfied with yer dinner, you ups an’ answers me back. I was tolerable astonished at the time, I remember, tho’ I didn’t let on, maybe, but jest caught you a clip on the ear for sassin’ yer biggers, an’ passed along. I’d niver hed any back-talk from an anthropoid before. Of course, as you say, it came nateral-like to you; you was on’y addin’ one more language to your vurry considerable stock, an’ I reckon from what you tell me that the de-flections of the verb are much simpler in Amurrkan than in Chimpanzee for instance; but the fack remains that you’re the first monkey I iver heard talkin’ outside of his own dialeck. The Boss was considerable interessted in my re-port, an’ he’s worked up a theory of how your species got the bulge on the rest by larnin’ their various lingoes, workin’ trade relations, and pouchin’ the difference of exchange on cokernuts an’ bread-fruits. It’s his idee to deliver himself of a lecture on the subject before the R’yal Institoot, an’ make you sing some o’ your folksongs whin we get to London.’
‘Ah—what like’s London, dad?’
‘Wahl, sonny, it’s not so fine a place as Bawston, but it has its p’ints. The people are easier took in than in Bawston, an’ we find it a better place for a Show. Then they hev a King in London, which we don’t hev in Bawston; besides dooks and markises, which we on’y see in Amurrka in the pairin’ season. An’ Shakspere was born near there too, an’ the original Miss Corelli. One city’s much like another, whin you’ve bin three years in Borneo. What a man gits a yearn for is civalisation.’
‘Ci-va-li-sation ... What’s civalisation, dad?’
‘It’s a hard word, sonny; but it means purty well everything we don’t hev here in Borneo. It means leadin’ a higher life, hustlin’ around, machinery, perlicemen, hevin’ a good time, iced drinks, theaters, ringin’ a bell fer yer boots, an’ a hunderd other things. Gas lamps, an’ electric light, an’ beer, an’ wine——’
‘Like yonder?’
‘That’s it, sonny; like that lot I brought from Bilimano, on’y stronger. An’ iverybody’s in lovely close; all the women lookin’ like picters outer “Puck”; all the men wi’ creases down their pants; pavement down along all the streets——’