The Speech of Monkeys

Among my personal friends of the Simian race, there is none more devoted to me than little McGinty, another winter boarder at Central Park. From the first of my acquaintance with McGinty we had been staunch friends, and when I go to visit him he expresses the most unbounded delight. He will reach his little arms through the bars of the cage, and put his hands on my cheeks, hold his mouth up to the wires, and talk to me at great length. When I go into the cage he will place himself on a perch in the cage, where he will sit with his arms around my neck, lick my cheeks affectionately, pull my ears, and chatter to me in a sweet but plaintive tone. When Mickie joins the play, which he invariably does, by climbing or jumping on to my shoulders, and interrupting the tete-a-tete between McGinty and myself, poor little McGinty's jealousy, which is his supreme passion, causes him to retire in disgust, and he will sometimes pout for several minutes without even accepting food from me. After he has pouted for a while, however, he will sometimes make overtures of reconciliation and seek by various means to divert my attention. One of his favourite means of renewing favour with me, was to whip poor little Nigger. He would look at me and laugh, grin and make grimaces, and then dash off at Nigger and want to eat him up.