His look was grave, and manner mild, and he was deficient in those mischievous tricks so peculiar to the monkey tribe in general. In only one instance did I experience any mischief from him, and that was in his meddling with my inkstand: he seemed to have an extraordinary penchant for the black fluid—would drink the ink, (by placing his finger in the inkstand, and then sucking it,) and suck the pens, whenever an opportunity offered of gratifying this morbid propensity: his black coat did not suffer from his dabbling in ink, unlike many of the human species, who suffer both in constitution and apparel from meddling too much with it. There was a degree of intelligence in the animal, beyond what is usually termed common instinct. These little miniatures of men,[55] (as they are satirically termed,) are said to possess more sagacity than other animals, and to be a close connecting link between the “powerful lord of the creation,” and creatures of an inferior genus. If it be true, as I have heard asserted, that intelligence is written in legible characters on the os frontis of the monkey tribe, I beg to add, that mischief and cunning also beam in their eye. One instance of a very close approximation to, if it may not be considered absolutely an exercise of, the reasoning faculty, occurred in this animal. Once or twice I lectured him on taking away my soap continually from the washing-place, which he would remove, for his amusement, from that place, and leave it about the cabin. One morning I was writing, the ape being present in the cabin, when casting my eyes towards him, I saw the little fellow taking the soap. I watched him, without his perceiving that I did so; and he occasionally would cast a furtive glance towards the place where I sat. I pretended to write; he seeing me busily occupied, took the soap, and moved away with it in his paw. When he had walked half the length of the cabin, I spoke quietly, without frightening him. The instant he found I saw him, he walked back again, and deposited the soap nearly in the same place from whence he had taken it. There was certainly something more than instinct in that action: he evidently betrayed a consciousness of having done wrong, both by his first and last actions;—and what is reason if that is not an exercise of it?