Once there, laughing at their funny pranks, Arthur cared not to go a step further or see anything else. Suddenly looking around he exclaimed, "Father, do see that queer chap up there, making faces and shaking his head at some of us. I wonder what he would do if he could get at us."
"Scratch your eyes out, maybe," said a strange voice.
Arthur started at the unaccustomed tones and searched anxiously the many faces for his father's, but it was not among them. Where was he? Was Arthur alone? Had his father left him in such a place?
He pressed his way out of the throng, hurried this way and that, wondering what he should do, when to his great joy there sat his father looking up at a donkey that stood in a high place calmly contemplating the people below.
"Why, father," broke out Arthur, "I feared I or you was lost. But what are you doing in this spot, looking at that stupid beast? Did you never see a donkey before?"
"Not such a donkey," was the answer.
"Umph! what's a donkey pray, but—a donkey? Stubborn, ugly thing. Come and see the monkeys and enjoy yourself. All the people are there. They are cutting up enough to make you laugh yourself to pieces."
"And yet, my boy, there is more in that dead, stuffed donkey to interest your father than all the rest of this museum and every monkey in Africa to boot. You see the donkey has not a very beautiful face, neither is his motion the most rapid or graceful, and sometimes he is a bit stubborn, though that is because he is cruelly treated, yet the world of business could get on quite well without tigers and monkeys; not so well without donkeys. They are not for show, but for work, like some plain folks whose hands are rough doing other people good."
"But what about this donkey? I never saw one in a museum before."
"And you may never again. This one wrote his own history, and he did it in five minutes, and with his heels!"