(1453)
HUMAN TRAITS IN BIRDS
Our domestic birds often manifest symptoms of passions, whims, and moral aberrations, clearly analogous to those of their biped proprietors; and in the higher animals those manifestations become so unmistakable that a student of moral zoology is often tempted to indorse the view of that schoolgirl who defined a monkey as “a very small boy with a tail.” According to Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of moral evolution, the conscious prestige of our species first reveals itself in the emotions of headstrong volition that makes a little baby stamp its feet and strike down its fist, “commanding violently before it could form anything like a clear conception of its own wants. Untutored barbarians,” he adds, “are apt to indulge in similar methods of self-assertion, and, in settling a controversy, prefer menacing gestures to rational explanations. That tendency, however, is not confined to infants and savages. In his controversies with his cage-mate (a female spaniel), my pet Cutch will lay hold of the dog’s tail and enforce his theories with a peremptory pull that never fails to provoke a rough-and-tumble fight; but, long after the dog has relapsed into sullen silence, her antagonist will shake the cage with resounding blows, and every now and then steal a look at the bystanders, to invite their attention to his ‘best method of dealing with heretics.’”—Felix Oswald, Popular Science Monthly.
(1454)
HUMAN TRAITS IN DISASTER
Commenting on the great Johnstown flood, Julian Hawthorne wrote:
We know, despite all deprecation, that the heights and depths of humanity can not be overstated. One man rides hand in hand with death for the sake of the lives of his fellow men. Another mutilates the sacred hand of the infant for the sake of its gold ring. A mother intrusts her children, one after the other, to the flood, hoping the reeling plank may save them, but believing that, whether or not, they are safe with God. In the midst of the kingdom of death, another mother brings a new life into the world. An officer of the guard profanes the awful day with maudlin drunkenness. A population sees the accumulation of lifetimes, and half its own members, annihilated in one desperate hour, and it is silent because silence is the only complete expression of misery. And over all the continent, upon converging lines, are journeying the tangible proof of sympathy from a nation which hastens to acknowledge the indestructible brotherhood of man.
(1455)
HUMANE SENTIMENT
An incident showing the growth of the humane sentiment is told in connection with the recent Paris flood. Upon one occasion great crowds gathered on the banks of the Seine at a point where what appeared to be a man, but which turned out to be a pig, that had been carried out of its sty by the flood, was making a struggle for life. After humane bystanders had manned a boat, rescued the animal, and brought it to shore, one woman declared she could not think of allowing it to be saved from drowning only to be butchered, and offered to purchase it from its owner for $38. After securing the animal, the problem was to get it to its new quarters, and this she solved by buying a collar, to which she attached a rope to be used as a leader. In her promenade as a pig-leader she was assisted by a great crowd, who jested and jeered, and finally the pig was installed in his new home. Our forefathers who engaged in pig-sticking by way of sport would doubtless be amazed if told that the time would ever come when people in a flood-plagued city would not only rescue a drowning pig, but save it from the butcher’s knife.—Vogue.