Teachers -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
The elephants, the giraffe, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, etc., all
passed in review, and elicited remarks of wonder and astonishment from
the young visitors, such as their monstrous size and great strength were
well calculated to draw forth. The lions, tigers, leopards and bears
came in for a share of applause; but as the strength of these animals is
not evidenced by their size, I must acknowledge they were taken less
notice of than either the huge creatures or the smaller and more elegant
and delicate quadrupeds, which, generally speaking, won the admiration
of the party. The bipeds, we may be sure, were not neglected; but the
congregated tribe of them kept up such an incessant clatter, that having
borne it for some little time, Harry Maitland was fain to stop his ears
and run out of their house, declaring that 'their noise was worse than
could be made by a hundred scolding women.' A very ungallant
declaration, certainly, for a young gentleman, and one that he had not,
and was never likely to have, the opportunity of proving the truth of.
Harry was soon joined by the young ladies, whom the noise of the
parrot-house had nearly deafened, and a general resolution was put, and
carried by the whole party, Mabel herself not excepted, that fine
plumage did not at all make amends for disagreeable propensities.
'And now,' said Harry Maitland, with just one sly glance at the bright
silk frock, whose wearer was standing beside him, 'suppose we go and pay
a visit to our friends the monkeys? That is to say, young ladies,' he
added, 'if you don't think it would be jumping out of the frying-pan
into the fire, and can endure smell better than noise.'
'Oh yes!' was the general exclamation; 'do let us go and see the
monkeys.'
'Who has got any biscuits or nuts?' inquired Dora Maitland. 'I haven't
got anything.'
'I have some pieces of biscuit left from what I bought for the
elephants,' said Mabel.
'And I have nuts in my pocket,' said Harry; 'while the monkeys are
cracking them, we can be cracking our jokes.' But these proved to be
rather unpleasant ones, to one at least of the party, who, nevertheless,
as she could not foresee what was coming, was the first to laugh at
Harry's silly speech.
The monkey-house proved, as they thought it would, anything but
agreeable to the olfactory nerves of our young friends; though their
attention was soon diverted from what was offensive, by the very amusing
gymnastics of the monkeys, who, while they performed their various feats
of skill, had evidently an eye to the main chance, and kept a vigilant
look-out for something more substantial than applause.
'Give this old fellow a bit of your biscuit, Mabel,' said Dora Maitland;
'he is evidently expecting some from us.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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