Father came home early Monday, and seemed quite pleased with the monkey. He said it was an interesting study, and he told Susan that he hoped that she would be contented with fewer beaux, now that there was a monkey constantly in the house. In a little while father caught Jocko lathering himself with the mucilage brush, and with a kitchen knife all ready to shave himself. He just laughed at the monkey, and told me to take good care of him, and not let him hurt himself. Of course I was dreadfully pleased to find that father liked Jocko, and I knew it was because he was a man, and had more sense than girls. But I was only deceiving myself and leaning on a broken weed. That very evening when father went into his study after supper he found Jocko on his desk. He had torn all his papers to pieces, except a splendid new map, and that he was covering with ink, and making believe that he was writing a President's Message about the Panama Canal. Father was just raging. He took Jocko by the scruff of the neck, locked him in the closet, and sent him away by express the next morning to a man in the city, with orders to sell him.
The express-man afterward told Mr. Travers that the monkey pretty nearly killed everybody on the train, for he got hold of the signal cord and pulled it, and the engineer thought it was the conductor, and stopped the train, and another train just behind it came within an inch of running into it and smashing it to pieces. Jocko did the same thing three times before they found out what was the matter, and tied him up so that he couldn't reach the cord. Oh, he was just beautiful! But I shall never see him again, and Mr. Travers says that it's all right, and that I'm monkey enough for one house. That's because Sue has been saying things against the monkey to him; but never mind.
First my dog went, and now my monkey has gone. It seems as if everything that is beautiful must disappear. Very likely I shall go next, and when I am gone, let them find the dog and the monkey, and bury us together.
OUR POST-OFFICE BOX.
Roma, on the Rio Grande, Texas,
December 31, 1880.