"In the place where I live by the great lake there is lately come a man." So the lion! "He is a trading man. His legs are bandy. He is rarely shaven. In the morning his eyes are bleary. He blinks at the green light of dawn. "And in the green glade where he is come he has builded a house. He has littered the ground with mangled boughs of trees, with papers, with tin cans which are emptied of his food. And the winds cannot clean that place, nor the rains wash the obscenity away. "And all day long this man sits behind his counter in the little shop and barters with the black man, giving knives and beads and cloth for the skins of the animals whom it is allotted to the black man to kill. And giving him white man's liquor. "And the white man drinks his own liquor, and when his heart is high with it, he takes his rifle and comes to seek me--for he has to seek me; I and all the clean things of the land avoid him, so little kin is he to us. "And if he kills me for his sport, my lioness will come and he will kill her, too, and what shall become of our little tawny cubs? "Why should this man come into our clean land, and make unbeautiful the dells, and stalk me that he may boast to other drinking men: 'I have killed the king of beasts'?" "Ay! Ay!" The angel is disturbed. "He does make the place look bad. And true for you, he does go after you. I understand. I understand fully, but--" And now the tiger has arisen, and his speech comes sibilant, with a little snarl: "They who come up the Hooghly are not unshaved but clean. They are precise, languid men. They come for gain in the country. They do not barter in shops, but gain comes to them. They govern, and for being governed the brown men of India pay tribute and tax. "And when the languid men from over the sea grow tired of governing, they go out to seek adventure. They send out the brown Indian men on foot to rouse me from the jungle sleep. And they follow with guns on our brother the elephant, and when I am driven into the open, and stand there dazed with the sun, they shoot at me from the back of our brother the elephant. "And was it for this I was made, given great emerald eyes, given amber skin with great black stripes, given silken muscles, and claws like knives, to be driven out of my warm green jungle into the blinding sun, and be killed by languid men?" "Well, now, you know what they say; if they did n't kill you, you 'd kill them." "How many have I killed, except in defense? Is it sport for me to leave the cool, moonlit glades, and come to the hot cities to kill men? If I want fighting, are there not the wild boar and my brother the elephant? And if I want food, is man as succulent as the young kid?" "Ay, there 's a lot in that. And what is your complaint?" He turned to the great carven elephant.