Kangaroos are common enough in menageries, and the next time you visit such a place look for one. It seems a pity to shut them up in cages, where they have no room to take even the smallest jump. But, then, if they were not caged there is no knowing where they would jump to. Some of the old kangaroos are rough customers when brought to bay. A big fellow will sometimes seize a dog in his short fore legs and with one of his great hind feet give him a scrape that will make him wish he had never seen a kangaroo. Just as you have seen a quiet peaceable boy when he had been worried and annoyed by a teasing and quarrelsome fellow, suddenly blaze up and astonish the young rascal by giving him a good thrashing. THE STORY OF POLARGNO. Polargno was an Esquimaux boy. At the time the things happened to him that I am going to relate to you he was sixteen years old, and as merry a fellow as you could find anywhere. Here is his portrait. [Illustration: POLARGNO.] Perhaps you think him ugly, but our ideas of beauty depend a good deal upon what we are accustomed to see around us. You like a white skin, regular features, and fine, soft, wavy hair. But the negroes of Central Africa do not admire this style in the least. They prefer thick lips, flat noses, shining black skins, and hair as tightly twisted and as wiry as possible. And Polargno’s friends looked upon him as a boy of a remarkably fine appearance, for they considered it very proper that he should have a stubby nose, thick lips, small eyes, and lank, coarse hair. His parents thought him handsome, but his mother was grieved because he was not quite as fat as other Esquimaux boys of his age. To be very beautiful in the eyes of an Esquimaux one must be very fat. Polargno’s father was not much taller than his son, but he was very much broader. He consoled his wife, however, by assuring her that he was no larger than Polargno at the same age. In this picture, Polargno is dressed in the suit he wears out of doors in the winter. It is a complete suit of seal-skin, with the fur outside. This is put on over the in-door suit, boots and all. This in-door suit is also of seal-skin, but it is made up with the fur turned inside. To make the costume complete, he should have on his head a fur hood. People have to dress warmly in the Esquimaux country where the ground is covered with snow three-fourths of the year. Polargno’s father owned a winter and a summer residence; which sounds very grandly, to be sure, but he was no richer than the rest of the tribe. There was much similarity among the families of the settlement in regard to wealth. One family might possess a few more skins than the others, or softer beds, or an extra lamp; but, on the whole, one man was about as well off as his neighbors, and they visited each other in the most sociable manner, knowing nothing of rank and riches.