Once I saw the solid keeper of a well-known elephant (a grand mass of sagacious substance, gentle, good, and amiable) try his hand among the monkeys, creatures in their way as worthy, but of different fibre. These too knew what kindness is, and had their sense of gratitude, but could not stop to dwell upon it, and let it ripen in their hearts. The keeper, accustomed to slow ways, and leisurely though deep emotion, exerted all his charm of eye and benevolence of whistle, and offered baits to cupboard-love, and even deigned to winsome ticklings of places not too hairy to be touched by human tenderness. He gazed with zoologic pride at the manager of the monkeys, who was putting a new lash on his whip; then his glory flew into a shriek, for his thumb was bitten in twain, and a jabber of general joy endorsed it. So it is too sure to be with any man, who drawing reason from her higher sources, applies the product of his skill, even in homoeopathic doses, to that irrational creature--love. Strogue had no idea of the meaning of that word. A traveller gets too-far abroad, too loose, and large, and vague, and shifty, shallow with glancing instead of gazing, skimming the world instead of letting it cream. Therefore to me there was scarcely a crumb of comfort in all his assurances; and the only thing to stroke the long anxiety the right way of the grain, and smooth its tissue, was to keep on steadily with the labours of the day. And when these can be carried on out of doors, under the sky, and (if so I may say) with the eyes of the Lord smiling down on them, it is not to the credit of any young man, if he kicks about under his blanket and groans, when the night makes all things equal. Unless he has bodily pain, I mean--which is another pair of shoes, that can never be unlaced by any effort of our own.