| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 1 | 236 | 472 | 708 | 944 |
|
II.
Homo was no ordinary wolf. From his appetite for medlars and potatoes he
might have been taken for a prairie wolf; from his dark hide, for a
lycaon; and from his howl prolonged into a bark, for a dog of Chili. But
no one has as yet observed the eyeball of a dog of Chili sufficiently to
enable us to determine whether he be not a fox, and Homo was a real
wolf. He was five feet long, which is a fine length for a wolf, even in
Lithuania; he was very strong; he looked at you askance, which was not
his fault; he had a soft tongue, with which he occasionally licked
Ursus; he had a narrow brush of short bristles on his backbone, and he
was lean with the wholesome leanness of a forest life. Before he knew
Ursus and had a carriage to draw, he thought nothing of doing his fifty
miles a night. Ursus meeting him in a thicket near a stream of running
water, had conceived a high opinion of him from seeing the skill and
sagacity with which he fished out crayfish, and welcomed him as an
honest and genuine Koupara wolf of the kind called crab-eater.
As a beast of burden, Ursus preferred Homo to a donkey. He would have
felt repugnance to having his hut drawn by an ass; he thought too highly
of the ass for that. Moreover he had observed that the ass, a
four-legged thinker little understood by men, has a habit of cocking his
ears uneasily when philosophers talk nonsense. In life the ass is a
third person between our thoughts and ourselves, and acts as a
restraint. As a friend, Ursus preferred Homo to a dog, considering that
1
8
Page
Quick Jump
|