You flatter yourselves, gentlemen. Do you suppose for a moment you have more ingenuity, ability, and patience than the Spider, who unaided produces the silken material and weaves the most marvellous fabric in the world? You cannot even make lint compared to it, although the cotton is grown ready to your hand. Who, like the Spider, can prevail upon his food to come to his door, and secure it so cunningly? and who so deftly can escape danger? Again, are you more crafty than the Fox, more subtle than the Serpent? You boast of your heart, and yet when you want a symbol of tenderness or devotion it is among our ranks you look for it. Show me the human mother who, like the Pelican, would daily pierce her side, or, like the Kangaroo, bear the constant burden of her little ones. Talk as you like of your paternal kindness, and the sacrifices you make to bring up your children; in short, you parade everything that will in any way minister to your own vanity. You are careful to publish your good deeds with assumed humility, that the world may trumpet them abroad. But for constancy and unobserved devotedness to her offspring the meanest bird will put mankind to the blush. Show me the father who, while attending to the duties of his office, would prepare his children’s food and rock them to sleep. We, the birds and brutes of creation, do naturally what costs you an almost superhuman effort. We have no need of moral and religious institutions to teach us how dutifully to fill our allotted spheres. Natural instinct is our teacher, and we obey its faintest whisperings. We have no schools of music, the arts, or sciences; for all that, the Nightingale’s notes are true and harmonious, and the comb of the Bee continues to be constructed with matchless beauty and precision. You live in families, so do we; but supposing a human family were compelled to spend an entire winter, like the poor Marmots, shut up in one dark chamber, what would be the result? I fear some broken tempers and more fractured bones. {364} You are proud, so is the Peacock; but the latter lives on his pride, while you frequently die of it—it chokes you. [Illustration] What can I say about human courage?—simply nothing. My own good nature prompts me here to draw the veil, only adding a word on the subject of mendicity. [Illustration]