The Monikins

by James Fenimore Cooper

I could not but admire the virtue of the “social-stake system,” which kept men so sensibly alive to all their rights, let them live where they would, or under what form of government, which was so admirably suited to sustain truth and render us just. In reply I sent back epithet for epithet, echoed all the groans of my correspondent, and railed as became a man who was connected with a losing concern.

This closed my correspondence for the present, and I arose wearied with my labors, and yet greatly rejoicing in their fruits. It was now late, but excitement prevented sleep; and before retiring for the night I could not help looking in upon my guests. Captain Poke had gone to a room in another part of the hotel, but the family of amiable strangers were fast asleep in the antechamber. They had supped heartily as I was assured, and were now indulging in a happy but temporary oblivion—to use an improved expression—of all their wrongs. Satisfied with this state of things, I now sought my own pillow, or, according to a favorite phrase of Mr. Noah Poke, I also “turned in.”

CHAPTER IX.
THE COMMENCEMENT OF WONDERS, WHICH ARE THE MORE EXTRAORDINARY ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR TRUTH.

I dare say my head had been on the pillow fully an hour before sleep closed my eyes. During this time I had abundant occasion to understand the activity of what are called the “busy thoughts.” Mine were feverish, glowing, and restless. They wandered over a wild field; one that included Anna, with her beauty, her mild truth, her womanly softness, and her womanly cruelty; Captain Poke and his peculiar opinions; the amiable family of quadrupeds and their wounded sensibilities; the excellences of the social-stake system; and, in short, most of that which I had seen and heard during the last four-and-twenty hours. When sleep did tardily arrive, it overtook me at the very moment that I had inwardly vowed to forget my heartless mistress, and to devote the remainder of my life to the promulgation of the doctrine of the expansive-super-human-generalized-affection-principle, to the utter exclusion of all narrow and selfish views, and in which I resolved to associate myself with Mr. Poke, as with one who had seen a great deal of this earth and its inhabitants, without narrowing down his sympathies in favor of any one place or person in particular, Stunin’tun and himself very properly excepted.

It was broad daylight when I awoke on the following morning. My spirits were calmed by rest, and my nerves had been soothed by the balmy freshness of the atmosphere. It appeared that my valet had entered and admitted the morning air, and then had withdrawn as usual to await the signal of the bell before he presumed to reappear. I lay many minutes in delicious repose, enjoying the periodical return of life and reason, bringing with it the pleasures of thought and its ten thousand agreeable associations. The delightful reverie into which I was insensibly dropping was, however, ere long arrested by low, murmuring, and, as I thought, plaintive voices at no great distance from my own bed. Seating myself erect, I listened intently and with a good deal of surprise; for it was not easy to imagine whence sounds so unusual for that place and hour could proceed. The discourse was earnest and even animated; but it was carried on in so low a tone that it would have been utterly inaudible but for the deep quiet of the hotel. Occasionally a word reached my ear, and I was completely at fault in endeavoring to ascertain even the language. That it was in neither of the five great European tongues I was certain, for all these I either spoke or read; and there were particular sounds and inflections that induced me to think that it savored of the most ancient of the two classics. It is true that the prosody of these dialects, at the same time that it is a shibboleth of learning, is a disputed point, the very sounds of the vowels even being a matter of national convention; the Latin word dux, for instance, being ducks in England, docks in Italy, and dukes in France: yet there is a ‘je ne sais quoi,’ a delicacy in the auricular taste of a true scholar, that will rarely lead him astray when his ears are greeted with words that have been used by Demosthenes or Cicero. [Footnote: Or Chichero, or Kickero, whichever may happen to suit the prejudices of the reader.] In the present instance I distinctly heard the word my-bom-y-nos-fos-kom-i-ton, which I made sure was a verb in the dual number and second person, of a Greek root, but of a signification that I could not on the instant master, but which beyond a question every scholar will recognize as having a strong analogy to a well-known line in Homer. If I was puzzled with the syllables that accidentally reached me, I was no less perplexed with the intonations of the voices of the different speakers. While it was easy to understand they were of the two sexes, they had no direct affinity to the mumbling sibilations of the English, the vehement monotony of the French, the gagging sonorousness of the Spaniards, the noisy melody of the Italians, the ear-splitting octaves of the Germans, or the undulating, head-over-heels enunciation of the countrymen of my particular acquaintance Captain Noah Poke. Of all the living languages of which I had any knowledge, the resemblance was nearer to the Danish and Swedish than to any other; but I much doubted at the time I first heard the syllables, and still question, if there is exactly such a word as my-bom-y-nos-fos-kom-i-ton to be found in even either of those tongues. I could no longer support the suspense. The classical and learned doubts that beset me grew intensely painful; and arising with the greatest caution, in order not to alarm the speakers, I prepared to put an end to them all by the simple and natural process of actual observation.

The voices came from the antechamber, the door of which was slightly open. Throwing on a dressing-gown, and thrusting my feet into slippers, I moved on tiptoe to the aperture, and placed my eye in such a situation as enabled me to command a view of the persons of those who were still earnestly talking in the adjoining room. All surprise vanished the moment I found that the four monkeys were grouped in a corner of the apartment, where they were carrying on a very animated dialogue, the two oldest of the party (a male and a female) being the principal speakers. It was not to be expected that even a graduate of Oxford, although belonging to a sect so proverbial for classical lore that many of them knew nothing else, could at the first hearing decide upon the analogies and character of a tongue that is so little cultivated even in that ancient sea of learning. Although I had now certainly a direct clew to the root of the dialect of the speakers, I found it quite impossible to get any useful acquaintance with the general drift of what was passing among them. As they were my guests, however, and might possibly be in want of some of the conveniences that were necessary to their habits, or might even be suffering under still graver embarrassments, I conceived it to be a duty to waive the ordinary usages of society, and at once offer whatever it was in my power to bestow, at the risk of interrupting concerns that they might possibly wish to consider private. Using the precaution, therefore, to make a little noise, as the best means of announcing my approach, the door was gently opened, and I presented myself to view. At first I was a little at a loss in what manner to address the strangers; but believing that a people who spoke a language so difficult of utterance and so rich as that I had just heard, like those who use dialects derived from the Slavonian root, were most probably the masters of all others; and remembering, moreover, that French was a medium of thought among all polite people, I determined to have recourse to that tongue. “Messieurs et mesdames,” I said, inclining my body in salutation, “mille pardons four cette intrusion feu convenable”—but as I am writing in English it may be well to translate the speeches as I proceed; although I abandon with regret the advantage of going through them literally, and in the appropriate dialect in which they were originally spoken.

“Gentlemen and ladies,” I said, inclining my body in salutation, “I ask a thousand pardons for this inopportune intrusion on your retirement; but overhearing a few of what I much fear are but too well-grounded complaints, touching the false position in which you are placed as the occupant of this apartment, and in that light your host, I have ventured to approach, with no other desire than the wish that you would make me the repository of all your griefs, in order, if possible, that they may be repaired as soon as circumstances shall in any manner allow.”

The strangers were very naturally a little startled at my unexpected appearance, and at the substance of what I had just said. I observed that the two ladies were apparently in some slight degree even distressed, the younger turning her head on one side in maiden modesty, while the elder, a duenna sort of looking person, dropped her eyes to the floor, but succeeded in better maintaining her self-possession and gravity. The eldest of the two gentlemen approached me with dignified composure, after a moment of hesitation, and returning my salute by waving his tail with singular grace and decorum, he answered as follows. I may as well state in this place that he spoke the French about as well as an Englishman who has lived long enough on the continent to fancy he can travel in the provinces without being detected for a foreigner. Au reste, his accent was slightly Russian, and his enunciation whistling and harmonious. The females, especially in some of the lower keys of their voices, made sounds not unlike the sighing tones of the Eolian harp. It was really a pleasure to hear them; but I have often had occasion to remark that, in every country but one, which I do not care to name, the language when uttered by the softer sex takes new charms, and is rendered more delightful to the ear.

“Sir,” said the stranger, when he had done waving his tail, “I should do great injustice to my feelings, and to the monikin character in general, were I to neglect expressing some small portion of the gratitude I feel on the present occasion. Destitute, houseless, insulted wanderers and captives, fortune has at length shed a ray of happiness on our miserable condition, and hope begins to shine through the cloud of our distress, like a passing gleam of the sun. From my very tail, sir, in my own name and in that of this excellent and most prudent matron, and in those of these two noble and youthful lovers, I thank you. Yes! honorable and humane being of the genus homo, species Anglicus, we all return our most tail-felt acknowledgments of your goodness!”

Here the whole party gracefully bent the ornaments in question over their heads, touching their receding foreheads with the several tips, and bowed. I would have given ten thousand pounds at that moment to have had a good investment in tails, in order to emulate their form of courtesy; but naked, shorn, and destitute as I was, with a feeling of humility I was obliged to put my head a little on one shoulder and give the ordinary English bob, in return for their more elaborate politeness.