Harper's Young People, January 25, 1881 / An Illustrated Monthly

by Various

Just at that moment Toby felt some one pulling at the back of his coat, and looking around, he saw it was a little brown hand, reaching through the bars of the air-hole of the cage, that was tugging away at his coat.

"There!" he said, triumphantly, to Ben. "Look there. I told Mr. Stubbs if he wanted anything more to eat, to tell me, an' I would give it to him. Now you can see for yourself that he's come for it," and Toby took a doughnut from his pocket, and put it into the tiny hand, which was immediately withdrawn. "Now what do you think of Mr. Stubbs knowing what I say to him?"

"They often stick their paws up through there," said Ben, in a matter-of-fact tone. "I've had 'em pull my coat in the night till they made me as nervous as ever any old woman was. You see, Toby, my boy, monkeys is monkeys; an' you mustn't go to gettin' the idea that they're anything else, for it's a mistake. You think this old monkey in here knows what you say? Why, that's just the cuteness of the old fellow; he watches you to see if he can't do just as you do, an' that's all there is about it."

Toby was more than half convinced that Ben was putting the matter in its proper light, and he would have believed all that had been said if, just at that moment, he had not seen that brown hand reaching through the hole to clutch him again by the coat.

The action seemed so natural, so like a hungry boy who gropes in the dark pantry for something to eat, that it would have taken more arguments than Ben had at his disposal to persuade Toby that his Mr. Stubbs could not understand all that was said to him. Toby put another doughnut in the outstretched hand, and then sat silently, as if in a brown-study over some difficult problem.

For some time the ride was made in silence. Ben was going through all the motions of whistling without uttering a sound, a favorite amusement of his, and Toby's thoughts were far away in the humble home he had scorned, with Uncle Daniel, whose virtues had increased with every mile of distance which had been put between them, and whose faults had decreased in a corresponding ratio.

Toby's thoughtfulness had made him sleepy, and his eyes were almost closed in slumber, when he was startled by a crashing sound, was conscious of a sense of being hurled from his seat by some great force, and then he lay senseless by the side of the road, while the wagon remained a perfect wreck, from out of which a small army of monkeys were escaping. Ben's experienced ear had told him at the first crash that his wagon was breaking down, and without having time to warn Toby of his peril, he had leaped clear of the wreck, keeping his horses in perfect control, thus averting any more trouble. It was the breaking of one of the axles which Toby had heard just before he was thrown from his seat, and when the body of the wagon had come down upon the hard road, the entire structure had been wrecked.

The monkeys, thus suddenly released from their confinement, had scampered off in every direction, and, by a singular chance, Toby's aged friend started for the woods in such a direction as to bring him directly upon the boy's senseless body. As the monkey came up to Toby he stopped, through the well-known curiosity of his kind, and began to examine the body carefully, prying into each pocket he could reach, and trying to open the half-closed eyelids in order to peep in under them.

Fortunately for Toby, he had fallen upon a mud-bank, and was only stunned for the moment, having received no serious bruises, even though he had been thrown such a distance. The attentions bestowed upon him by the monkey served the purpose of bringing him to his senses; and after he had looked around him in the gray light of the coming morning, it would have taken far more of a philosopher than ever old Ben was to have persuaded the boy that monkeys did not possess reasoning faculties.

The monkey was picking at his ears, nose, and mouth, as monkeys always do when they get an opportunity, and the expression of his face was as grave as possible. Toby firmly believed that the monkey's face showed sorrow at his fall, and he believed that the attentions which were being bestowed upon him were for the purpose of learning whether he had been injured or not.