LOYALTY.
Life may be given in many ways
And loyalty to truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So generous is fate;
But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms, and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,
Fed from within with all the strength he needs.
J. R. Lowell.
ANIMALS AND HUMAN SPEECH.
Animals have much more capacity to understand human speech than is generally supposed. The Hindoos invariably talk to their elephants, and it is amazing how much the latter comprehend. The Arabs govern their camels with a few cries, and my associates in the African desert were always amused whenever I addressed a remark to the big dromedary who was my property for two months; yet at the end of that time the beast evidently knew the meaning of a number of simple sentences. Some years ago, seeing the hippopotamus in Barnum's museum looking very stolid and dejected, I spoke to him in English, but he did not even open his eyes. Then I went to the opposite corner of the cage, and said in Arabic, "I know you; come here to me." He instantly turned his head toward me; I repeated the words, and thereupon he came to the corner where I was standing, pressed his huge, ungainly head against the bars of the cage, and looked in my face with a touch of delight while I stroked his muzzle. I have two or three times found a lion who recognized the same language, and the expression of his eyes, for an instant, seemed positively human.
Bayard Taylor.