“Men who read men,” said he, oracularly, “rule men. Men who read books are ruled by the folks who wrote them. That’s the diff’rence. Let me explain what I mean by what I said ’bout cobras. I had to run down to Noo York last fall on business. I had a couple of hours on my hands an’ I went up for a look at the Bronx Zoo, there. I went into a squat, Dago-lookin’ joint called the ‘Rept’l House.’ Full of snakes and crawly, slimy things. Big crowd in front of one glass cage. Only snake in that cage was a big, long, brown critter with an eye that wa’nt good to look at. The sign said he was a King Cobra an’ habitated somewhere or other. The attendant wanted to wash the winders of that cage from the inside. What does he do? Does he put his arms in an’ wiggle a mop within reach of Mister King Cobra? Not him. He, or his boss, I guess, had learned to read snakes like I read men. What does he do? He slaps open a little door in the back of the cage, slings in a two-foot black snake an’ slams shut the door, quicker’n scat, before the Cobra knows what’s up. There lays the little black snake wrigglin’, scared like, on the floor of the cage among a lot of little red lizards that’s runnin’ ’round in the sand. “The King Cobra lifts up till his head’s about six foot above ground, an’ he looks down at the wrigglin’ black snake, like he was sizin’ up whether the little feller has any fight in him or not. An’ say! It was ’nough to give a feller the creeps to see that cobra-snake’s eye as he watched ’tother. Then, he seems to make up his mind the black snake ain’t bent on c’mittin’ sooside by beginnin’ the fight. So down swoops the King Cobra with a sort of rustly, swishin’ rush; an’ he grabs the little snake around the middle. No--not by the head or tail. He’s more mad than hungry. So he grabs him by the middle. An’ he hangs on. “Now what does the attendant do? He opens the door at the back, kneels on the threshold, leanin’ out right above the King Cobra, an’ ca’mly begins washin’ the winders with his long mop. Ev’ry swipe that man makes at the glass, his hand comes within a foot of the Cobra. But he didn’t even look at the big, pizenous brute coiled up there below his hand. He goes on washin’ the winder like there wasn’t a snake within ten miles.” “But,” asked Caine, interested in spite of himself, “there was surely danger that the Cobra might drop the little snake and strike at the man? If--” “That’s just the point!” cried Caleb, “He wouldn’t. His pizen an’ his temper was otherwise engaged. He’d sunk his fangs into one en’my. An’ it ain’t cobra natur’ to let go, once he’s got his grip. I found that out by askin’ one of the keepers. The man with the mop was as safe in that cage, just then, as he’d a’ been in a Meth’dist Conf’rence. The Cobra had just one idee. An’ that idee was already on the job.