“In the first place, animals have much more capacity to understand human speech than is generally supposed. Some years ago, seeing the hippopotamus in Barnum’s Museum looking very stolid and dejected, I spoke to him in English, but he did not even move his eyes. Then I went to the opposite corner of the cage and said in Arabic: ‘I know you; come here to me.’ He instantly turned his head toward me. I repeated the words, and thereupon he came to the corner where I was standing, pressed his huge, ungainly head against the bars of the cage, and looked in my face with a touching delight while I stroked his muzzle. I have two or three times found a lion who recognised the same language, and the expression of his eyes for an instant seemed positively human.” He also tells his experience with a tame lioness in Africa. “In a short time we were very good friends. She knew me, and always seemed glad to see me, though I sometimes teased her a little by getting astride of her back, or sitting upon her when she was lying down. When she was in a playful mood she would come to meet me as far as the rope would let her, get her forepaws around my leg and then take it in her mouth, as if she were going to eat me up. I was a little alarmed when she did this for the first time; but I soon saw that she was merely in play, and had no thought of hurting me, so I took her by the ears and slapped her sides, until at last she lay down and licked my hand. Her tongue was as coarse as a nutmeg grater, and my hand felt as if the skin was being rasped off. “There was also a leopard in the garden with which I used to play a great deal, but which I never loved so well as the lioness. He was smaller and more active, and soon learned to jump upon my shoulders when I stooped down, or to climb up the tree to which he was tied, whenever I commanded him. But he was not so affectionate as the lioness, and sometimes forgot to draw in his claws when he played, so that he not only tore my clothing, but scratched my hands. I still have the marks of one of his teeth on the back of my right hand. “My old lioness was never rough, and I have frequently, when she had stretched out to take a nap, sat upon her back for half an hour at a time, smoking my pipe or reading. “I assure you I was very sorry to part with her, and when I saw her for the last time one moonlight night, I gave her a good hug and an affectionate kiss. She would have kissed me back if her mouth had not been too large; but she licked my hand to show that she loved me, then laid her big head upon the ground and went to sleep. “Dear old lioness! I wonder if you ever think of me. I wonder if you would know me, should we ever see each other again.” If our late minister to Berlin, the accomplished poet, linguist, and cosmopolitan, could give his attention to animals as friends and companions, there can be nothing belittling in reading their praises as said or sung by those whom we all delight to honour.