I ought to say that my early isolation and ignorance tempted me to brood over the unattainable. Nevertheless, I claim credit for self-denial in pruning my introduction, as I might have dived deep into the miseries of solitude—the solitude of my early days. The theme was a prolific one, which I should not have allowed thus to escape. It is so soothing to complain; so comforting, indeed, as to pass for real happiness. I had not been alive a day before I learned what heat and cold were. The sun disappeared, leaving my rock as cold as an iceberg. Having nothing to do, I began to move, and felt about my shoulders something I conceived must be intended for use. Stretching forth these little arms or wings with which Nature had endowed me (she has lived too long on her reputation of being a good mother, loving equally all her children), after prolonged efforts I at last succeeded in rolling from the top of my rock. Thus my first experience in life was, as you see, a fall, which I speedily resented by digging my beak into the unsympathetic soil. This only increased my pain, and led to reflection. “It is evident,” I said, “one ought to be careful about one’s first step in life, and to reflect well before moving.” I then inwardly pondered over my destiny as a Penguin, not that I had the faintest pretension to philosophy, only when one is forced to live, and one is not accustomed to do so, one must find out some rules of life. “What is good?” “What is evil?” “What is life?” “What is a Penguin?” Before I could solve these questions, my eyelids closed in sleep. III. Hunger rudely awoke me! Forgetting my resolutions, strange as it may seem, I did not wait to inquire, “What is hunger?” but immediately proceeded to satisfy the craving by eating some shell-fish that {59} were yawning before me. I ought to have first indulged in a dissertation on the possible danger of following this ancient custom. My inexperience was punished, for by dint of eating too fast, I was nearly choked. I have no notion how I learned to eat, to drink, to walk, and move to right or left, measure distances with my eye, to know that all one sees is not one’s own; to come down and ascend, to swim, to fish, to sleep standing, to content myself with little or nothing, &c. It is sufficient to say that each and all of those studies caused me countless troubles, fabulous misadventures, and unheard-of trials. IV. What are our duties in the world? What will ultimately become of Penguins? Where do we go to after death? Why were some birds created without feathers, some fish without fins, or animals without feet?