Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/38

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ZIG-ZAGS AT THE ZOO.
37

blackguard to redeem himself by an occasional smile; nothing but orderly centuries of evolution will be of much use to him, and his present parvenu attempts to assume a position in life to which he was not born make him look worse than ever. He betrays himself—like a parvenu—by small and unconscious habits. Give a well-bred dog a biscuit, and he will munch it with gentlemanly relish and keep a polite welcome ready for another. A wolf, being always hungry enough to eat anything, will take it, but in an indifferent, perfunctory, disdainful fashion, not vouchsafing the courtesy of concealing his contempt for your present; while animal food drives him to the opposite extreme. The wolf can't even sleep like a dog. Bob, the Eskimo (who is a gentleman among dogs, with low neighbours whose manners he despises), sleeps as an honest dog always does sleep; flung upon the ground with his legs, head, and tail spread about fearlessly, and his mind as conscious of rectitude as if he could tell you so in Latin. Tom or Coolie can't sleep like that. The wolf tries to hide under himself. He remembers his many crimes, even in sleep, and can't trust his legs or his tail or anything else in sight. He hides his tail between his legs, and resorts to the most complicated and twisty devices for arranging his legs to hide each other. He gets underneath himself, covers himself over him, and tucks in the corners; and even then his sleep is restless. I don't think Red Riding Hood's grandmother has ever been properly digested.


Honest sleep.

Distrust.

A mere biscuit.

Something better.

Bob, the Eskimo dog, is a fine fellow, as friendly as any dog you may name, except to wolves. He would be glad to visit the wolves next door, and take their machinery to pieces hastily with his teeth, and the wolves so heartily reciprocate the sentiment that a sheet-iron memorial of the fact has been erected between the cages. There is another dog called Bob a little further along—the Dingo dog. He is a cunning-looking fellow, of more civilized condition than the wolves, but sharing with them their chief characteristic of eternal hunger. The Dingo dog is the only animal that can beat the cat's collection of nine lives; he is calculated to possess twenty-seven. If you give a wild Dingo a single bang on the head he will lie down as if killed at once, shamming; lying doggoh, in fact. But you may beat him out flat and dissect him, and as soon as your back is turned he will gather together his outlying fragments, blow himself into shape, and walk home. He doesn't mind a little accident of that sort.


Where's the lion?

In this row of cages, too, are jackals—black-backed jackals,