The Speech of Monkeys

As I repeated the sound his fears seemed to increase, until from a mere sense of compassion I desisted. No amount of coaxing would induce him to return to me or to accept any offer of peace which I could make. I retired to a distance of about twenty feet from his cage, and his master induced him to descend from the perch, which he did, with the greatest reluctance and suspicion. I gave the sound again from where I stood, and it produced almost the same results as before. The monkey gave out a singular sound in response to my efforts to appease him, but refused to become reconciled. After the lapse of eight or ten days, I had not been able to reinstate myself in his good graces, or to induce him to accept anything whatever from me. At this juncture I resorted to harsher means of bringing him to terms, and began to threaten him with a rod. At first he resented this, but soon yielded and came down merely from fear. He would place the side of his head on the floor, put out his tongue, and utter a very plaintive sound having a slight interrogative inflection. At first this act quite defied interpretation; but during the same period I was visiting a little monkey called Jack. For strangers, we were quite good friends, and Jack allowed me many liberties which the family assured me he had uniformly refused to others.