But the thing that pleased the Unwiseman more than anything else was a pet chamois that he encountered at a little Swiss Chalet on one of his tours of investigation. It was a cunning little animal, very timid of course, like a fawn, but tame, and for some reason or other it took quite a fancy to the Unwiseman—possibly because he looked so like a Swiss Mountain Boy with a peaked cap he had purchased, and ribbons wound criss-cross around his calves and his magnificent Alpen-stock upon which had been burned the names of all the Alps he had not climbed. And then the Unwiseman's yodel had become something unusually fine and original in the line of yodeling, which may have attracted the chamois and made him feel that the Unwiseman was a person to be trusted. At any rate the little animal instead of running away and jumping from crag to crag at the Unwiseman's approach, as most chamois would do, came inquiringly up to him and stuck out its soft velvety nose to be scratched, and permitted the Unwiseman to inspect its horns and silky chestnut-brown coat as if it recognized in the little old man a true and tried friend of long standing.
"Why you little beauty you!" cried the Unwiseman, as he sat on the fence and stroked the beautiful creature's neck. "So you're what they call a shammy, eh?"
The chamois turned its lovely eyes upon his new found friend, and then lowered his head to have it scratched again.
"Mary had a little sham
Whose hide was soft as cotton,
And everywhere that Mary went
The shammy too went trottin'."
sang the Unwiseman, dropping into poetry as was one of his habits when he was deeply moved.
THE CHAMOIS EVIDENTLY LIKED THIS VERSE FOR ITS EYES TWINKLED
The chamois evidently liked this verse for its eyes twinkled and it laid its head gently on the Unwiseman's knee and looked at him appealingly as if to say, "More of that poetry please. You are a bard after my own heart." So the Unwiseman went on, keeping time to his verse by slight taps on the chamois' nose.