The Speech of Monkeys

I accidentally dropped a small mirror one day by the cage in which there was a green monkey. The glass was broken into many small pieces. Quick as thought, the green monkey thrust her arm through the bars, grabbed the largest piece, and got it into her cage before I was fully aware of what she was trying to do. The fragment was about an inch wide by an inch and a half long. She caught a glimpse of herself in the glass, and her conduct was more like that of a crazy monkey than anything I can compare it to. She peeped into the fragment of the mirror, which she seemed to regard as a hole in something which separated her from another monkey. She held it up over her head at arm's-length, laid it down on the floor, held it against the wall, and twisted herself into every pose to get a better peep at that mysterious monkey on the other side of something, she could not tell what. When the glass was reversed, she seemed much perplexed, and would sometimes jump high off the floor, and turn herself entirely around, as if to untangle the mystery. Then again she would discover the right side of the glass, and would go through these antics again. Several times while holding it against the wall she would put her eyes close up against the glass, just as she would to a knot-hole in the wall. I tried in vain for some time to get the glass away from her lest she might injure herself with it, but only succeeded after considerable labour and through the help of her keeper.