BIM. AMONG THE BEASTS:

BEING A BOY'S ADVENTURES IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, WITH SOME INTERESTING REVELATIONS CONCERNING THE

STATE OF METEMPSYCHOSIS WHICH CONCERN US ALL.

IN OCCASIONAL CHAPTERS.

INTRODUCTORY.

"ONE more glass, Uncle Toby. Just one.' 'My dear Bim., what would mamma say?' The young gentleman's name was Abimelech Young Fry, but he was called 'Bim.' for shortness and sweetness and the conversation above referred to took place in the refreshment room in the Zoological Gardens, where Uncle Tobias was treating him to buns and brandy-cherries. The boy had seen eight summers, but only seven winters, because he had been born in the spring.

'A little cherry-brandy, my lad (like learning), is a dangerous thing, especially at your age,' remonstrated Uncle Tobias.

'I know it is, uncle; that is why-or at least one of the reasons why' [for Abimelech-as the name implies in the original-was the Soul of Truth]'I would like some more.'

The Young Frys are a numerous race. There are few houses in the metropolis, with the exception of the clubs, without a Young Fry in them, and even there I have recognised some specimens, though endeavouring to pass themselves off as Gronups, a branch of the same family of whom they are most unreasonably envious.

Tobias Calebs hesitated. He was not a Young Fry himself, being Bim.'s maternal uncle, and he did not quite understand the peculiarities of the family.

'Will another glass get into his head, I wonder? To be or not to be?' reflected the good-natured old fellow.

'To be,' answered the young gentleman, like an echo; 'to be, Toby.' He had taken the silence which had ensued while his uncle's judgment was maturing, for consent; and had drained the goblet, which held nearly a teaspoon and half, when the teaspoon with which you collared the cherries was

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out of it. It was a reprehensible act, but it was necessary to the development of my story. Its immediate effect, as above described, was familiarity of address; its consequence, which shewed itself directly he began to move, was ignorance of direction. To make a long story short, Abimelech Young Fry was obliged to confess that he did not know whether he stood on his head or his heels, and, indeed, the facts of the case were soon comprised within still narrower limits, for he was unable to stand on either, but had to be carried home in Uncle Toby's arms, and put to bed.

All Londoners, and most visitors from the country, who did not depart this life anterior to the year 1800, when the terrace was built (and I am not addressing those who did), must be acquainted with Bantling Terrace, Regent's Park. It is a splendid range of mansions in the stuccorelievo style of architecture; and towering proudly above its humbler neighbours, looks down upon the Zoological Gardens. All night long, its inhabitants enjoy the advantage, so rare in temperate climes, of hearing the Hyena's sarcastic laugh, or the laboured but successful breathing of the Grampus; while in the day, and especially in the summer noons, the air is made fragrant by Musk and Civet, or by the still more pungent odours of the Putorius fœtidus, obtained direct from the Mart. Abimelech Young Fry resided in this favoured terrace, so that Uncle Toby had not to carry him far, and besides, they arrived in a Hansom: he was put to bed, very unwell, and sorry for himself; let us draw down the windowblind, and forbear to contemplate the night he spent.

The sun and he arose simultaneously, but presenting a very different appearance. With that of the former, those of us who sit up late at night are accidentally familiar; but as to Bim.'s, this pen shall not describe it. Reverentia debetur pueris. We should not bear too hardly upon the follies of the young. His first act was to seize the water-jug, and-no, he was not violent; nor had he, I am sorry to say, any particular desire to wash himself at any time-he did but swallow the contents at a

single draught. His first reflection was in the looking-glass, and a very dishevelled one it was: his next was a passionate regret for his conduct of the previous day. The occurrence to which we have been compelled to make allusion happened early in the afternoon, when only half the animals had been visited. With those on the north side of the tunnel, in consequence of his own disgraceful conduct, he had not made acquaintance; and he was genuinely sorry, not only for what he had done, but for what he had not done. He not only suffered remorse, but yearned to make reparation. He would see those animals willy-nilly-whether his mother would let him or no,' like the frog in the ballad. It was not likely, after his late misconduct, indeed, that she should let him, and how, then, was he to accomplish his end? He was a good deal divided upon this question-for his head ached so that it seemed split in two-but at last a happy idea occurred to him, if, at least, an idea deserves to be called 'happy' which is wrong. As he stood at the window, flattening his little nose against the pane, and gazing longingly at the head of the giraffe, which can always be seen for nothing, and without difficulty, he heard the mower whetting his no, the bear whetting his tusks, in anticipation of his morning meal. Was it ivory, thought Abimelech dreamily, or was it bone? Bone! Eureka. (He had just been put into Greek.) His mother had a bone down-stairs, which, he had heard, was the sign of her membership to the Gardens, and would admit any one who carried it into those enchanted regions, at any hour; nay, it was even whispered, though he had never heard of its being employed for so sacrilegious a purpose, that it was available on a Sunday.

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To seize his shoes and stockings (which he did, however, in their reverse order), to thrust his little legs into their roomy nickerbockers, to struggle into his jacket and waistcoat, and to snatch his from its peg on the wall, was not-as I know you all expected it to be-'the work of an instant;' for he was very 'shaky,' was Master Abimelech Young Fry, and took as long to dress himself as his eldest brother, who had to shave his beard off every morning (which it was lucky he had not to do), or his eldest sister, who had to put one on at the back of her head. But he did get dressed at last, and boning the bone from the drawer in the hall-table, where it was usually kept, let himself softly out of doors.

It was a lovely summer morning, and the sounds of awakening life that saluted his ears would have been all that boy could wish, but for his consciousness of not deserving to hear them. The trumpeting of the elephant, the drumming of the gorilla on his (empty) stomach, the cheerful tootling of the horn of the rhinoceros, and the piano of the guinea-pig, which ran through all as clearly as the water-mark on a bank-note-made up a concert such as must be heard to be appreciated, and which, even then, does not always succeed in being so.

Abimelech was well acquainted with natural history from its very earliest stages, as exemplified in the contents of the Ark, down to the latest additions in Wood (the Rev. J. G.); but of the actual carnivora, in flesh and blood, he knew but little, his family having only recently migrated to Bantling Terrace from the Isle of Wight, where specimens of the fera naturæ are not numerous.

Now, for the first time, was he to make acquaintance with the banded Bandicoot, to be brought face to face with the white-fronted Lemur, the sooty Phalangist, and the ingenious but secretive Tucutuco-animals whom, I confess for my part, if I were to meet in the street to-morrow, I should be unable to recognise, as much from ignorance as from alarm.

As Bim. drew near the main entrance of the gardens, he took the bone out of his breast (where he had kept it carefully buttoned up), and, for the first time, perceived that one side of it had these printed words upon it, Royal Horticultural Society. His truant exodus from his mother's house, his unauthorised annexation of her private property, and all his reprehensible conduct, had thus benefited him nothing. He knew he should no more be able to move the incorruptible janitor of 'the Zoo' by the presentation of a ticket from any opposition establishment, than by the offer of a stick of alicampane, which (he knew) had been tried in vain only last week by another boy in his terrace, and he laid his head against a neighbouring pillar letter-box, and sobbed as though his little heart would break. Nor even then was his cup of humiliation full, for what he had taken for a letter-box was in fact one of the dirt-receivers which have been recently erected by the Board of Works, so that he literally bemoaned himself in dust and ashes.

But though Abimelech Young Fry was, as has been abundantly shewn, far from being a pattern boy, he had some redeeming points about him: he was what the coachman called a good plucked one," and the female domestics a regular Turk,' a term which, of course, in his case had neither an Infidel nor a Polygamous meaning.

The

He had got up very early-earlier probably than the gatekeeper and he was not going to be done out of his visit to the Zoological Gardens. 'No, not if he knew it,' said Abimelech. If the man was not there, he would-but here he came in sight of the turnstile, and there was the man. whole empyrean (which means air) seemed to ring with the Hyena's satiric laugh, as he beheld this unwelcome spectacle, and he also became conscious of a monotonous voice which repeated in an undertone: Members are respectfully requested not to admit boys, or others, with whom they are unacquainted, through the turnstiles.'

If Bim. had only possessed the small sum requisite to obtain admittance, then things would not have distressed him: nature would have worn a totally different aspect; but everything, alas, seems to breathe of scorn and contumely to him that is 'without a shilling.' On the other side of the road was the clip-gate, a piece of mechanism so contrived that visitors can pass out of the gardens, but are unable to return by the same means. It was dreadfully tantalising to gaze through its open bars at the Paradise into which entrance was denied to him, and to hear the grunts and shrieks, the roars and whines from its various inmates, sounding like so many invitations, which circumstances over which he had no control compelled him to decline. While sucking the bars, from which, perhaps, to his excited fancy, some slight flavour of wild beasts was capable of being extracted, he became conscious of a small voice, that murmured musically into his ear:

Push on, push on; why don't you push?
The boy that funks ain't worth a rush.

Bim. pushed with all his might, and, to his surprise and delight, the hinge yielded; and he found himself in the first department of the clip-gate, hedged in on both sides with iron bars.

And now,' remarked a still small voice, but not the same which he had heard before, for this was the voice of his own conscience- and now I have been and done it; I am a prisoner here for life, which is only what my undutiful behaviour deserves.' It would be his doom, he thought, to remain there through the revolving years, himself stuck fast, as a warning to other boys, who eat too many brandy-cherries (those were always on his mind, nor could he get the taste of them out of his mouth), and sacrilegiously stole bones; he would be a shocking example' to generation after generation of holiday-seekers, from Easter-Monday to EasterMonday, besides opposing a serious impediment to the traffic; an object of reprobation to man and beast and bird; a- But here the same gentle voice was heard again which had first addressed him, and it sounded like the voice of his youngest sister at home (whom he loved dearly, and to whom he was uniformly kind), though he well knew she was fast asleep in her cot in Bantling Terrace, and not even dreaming of such a thing as a burglary at the Zoological Gardens :

Push on, push on, repentant brother,
For one good turn deserves another.

And once more the hinge turned accordingly, and the bars seemed to melt before him, and he found himself on the right side of the hedge that kept the public out of the Beast Paradise.

Something else too had happened to him, though he did not quite know what it was. For one thing, he felt lighter; and he noticed that the sun, though by this time quite in a position to do it, did not cast his shadow on the ground. Just at that moment a window of the cottage opposite, which was the residence of the sub-superintendent of the gardens, opened, and that great official, who had heard the gate go click, looked out to see what had happened. Before that eye, before which every beast of the forest quailed, Abimelech (for so he was called when he did wrong, and not by his loving nickname) trembled with terror, but not in his shoes; he seemed to have no shoes, nor anything material about him, with the trifling exception of the bone of the Royal Horticultural Society; and the reason (curiously enough) why the sub-superintendent did not see him was, because he looked him through and through.

'It's very odd,' observed the official.

'It's very cold,' answered a female voice (that of the sub-superintendent's superintendent), from within the room, 'and I'll thank you to shut the window.'

Abimelech breathed again, though he could not see the vapour of his breath, and ventured to move stealthily on a little; not to walk, you must understand, for that means of locomotion had failed him, but to flit-not as they 'flit' in Scotland, where the word means to change houses, though he had done that in a sense-but to glide noiselessly on, as the cloud-shadows glide along the hills, or rather as the shadow of the slide of a magic-lantern in unskilful hands flits upon the suspended sheet; for, at present, he was not used to the motion. Skating is a most delightful accomplishment, and as easy as lying-I mean lying down, of course-to those who

you

understand it thoroughly; but to beginners, it is a little awkward, and it's just the same, when one is first disembodied (ask any militiaman else), and begins to flit. You go very fast, but it is by fits and starts, and you can't stop yourself exactly when please. To be sure, you can't fall, or if you did fall even backwards it would not matter, since there is nothing to fall upon; but it is irritating, to say the least of it, to find one's self flitting past some object to which we would have wished to give time and attention, and going a long way on before one can pull up, like a train that overshoots the platform. And this is exactly what happened to Bim. He was particularly anxious to read a certain Notice to Visitors he saw stuck up on a board, for, like many other persons who have committed great offences, he was exceedingly anxious to comport himself agreeably to every little regulation that should not interfere with his pleasure. If the notice should request him not to picnic in the gardens, nor to pluck the flowers, nor to give bags of paper (as some bad boys do) to the elephant instead of buns, he had made up his mind to obey it very cheerfully; but upon gliding back to the board, he found inscribed on it no such prosaic requests, but these beautiful verses in letters of gold :

Who moves yon gate the wrong way round,
A voice shall hear in each brute sound;
To him the talk of bird and beast
Shall be an intellectual feast;
Not Æsop's self, nor Poet Gay,

Has heard what he shall hear them say. The effect of poetry upon the mind of Abimelech Young Fry was to confuse it. Like the great Mr Carlyle, he was of opinion that, if anybody has anything particular to say to his fellow-creatures, he had better say it in prose. It was therefore quite a relief to his mind to perceive under the notice-board a hand, with gold rings on the fingers, and this plain statement attached to it: further information apply to the Secretary Bird.' And 'Where does he live, I wonder?' inquired Bim. aloud.

For

'His official residence is the first cage to the left, young gentleman, so soon as you get through the tunnel, answered a shrill squeaky voice.

'And who are you?' replied the astonished youth, looking all about him. The sound seemed to come from a neighbouring enclosure, in which were some logs of trees on an island in a pool of water, but there was nobody to be seen.

"Oh, I'm Castor Fiber; castor the hat, and fibre what it's made of-the Beaver,' And it was the Beaver.

A RACE FOR LIFE.

IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.-CHAPTER VIII.

THE journey across the plains was not marked by any very noteworthy occurrence. We were tolerably safe from Indian attacks, since our escort numbered no less than eighteen sabres, and it is well known that the red men, unless when smarting under recent injury, avoid any conflict which is certain to cost them dear. We saw the curling smoke of their fires on distant bluffs, and sometimes the dim figures of shadowy horsemen appeared for a few minutes on the horizon, just as we saw certain lines of black specks, which we were told represented migratory herds of the bison.

But presently buffaloes and Indians vanished like ghosts at cock-crow; and except that there was once a prairie-fire of respectable dimensions, which might have proved dangerous, had not the wind fortunately swept the billowy flames to southward over the sea of grass, we encountered few perils, and none but unavoidable and trifling hardships. At Platte City, within the limits of the state of Missouri, we parted with our good friends of the government train; and after some inquiry, decided on availing ourselves of a farmer's offer to take us down the river in his broadhorn as far as Westport, where we should be sure to find a steamer to take us to the state capital of Jefferson. The large boat, laden with golden ears of ripe maize, and manned by six negro rowers, required careful steering as we made our way among the shoals and shallows, the willow-fringed islands, and the half-sunken trees embedded in mud-banks, which combine with the violence of the current to give its bad name to the upper waters of the 'Mad Missouri.' But there had been no recent rains to swell the turbid flood, so that the stream was comparatively gentle; while the farmer's son, a sunburnt stripling in homespun, steered with remarkable dexterity, and under press of sail and oars, down the river we went before the favouring wind.

The grinning, sable-skinned crew, who, like many enfranchised slaves, had elected to work for wages under a reasonably good master, in preference to running the risks of an unknown labour market in the Southern towns, chattered and sang gaily as they plied their oars; but as their employer, a heavy, elderly man, slept nearly all the way, and his son had quite enough to do with the management of the tiller-ropes, Willy and I were thrown on our own resources as regarded conversation.

But, George, old boy, what do you mean to do?' asked my younger brother, rather anxiously. It was by no means the first time that Willy had addressed me with that pertinent question, but never with any satisfactory result.

'I don't know,' I answered, listlessly, letting my thin fingers dangle in the rushing water that swirled beneath the gunwale; and, to tell you the truth, brother, I don't much care. Not that I intend to be an idler. But an industrious man who knows something of the West can pick up a livelihood without much difficulty, and I have no right to aspire to anything further just now.'

I sighed involuntarily as I spoke; and Willy looked sad enough, for he knew perfectly well the cause of my moody humour. My prospects were utterly spoiled. The secretaryship was gone, of course, and with the downfall of that comfortable castle in the air, all my dearest hopes were involved in ruin. It was not only that my marriage with Annie Morgan was now indefinitely to be deferred -for when could I hope that a fresh opportunity of equal value should fall in my way?-but there was only too much probability that the parting between my darling and myself might prove a final one. Her father, the old vice-consul, had a prejudice against long engagements, and had more than once told me that he would as soon see Annie in her coffin, as watch her pining and withering in one of those dreary, interminable troth-plights of which in England we see so many. Captain Morgan had, as I knew, a strong wish to claim the pension to which he was now entitled, and return to lay his bones in the old country; and in that

case, true as Annie was, she might ultimately be induced to forget luckless George Fern as his image faded in absence.

'By-the-bye, George,' said Willy, fumbling in the pocket of a loose overcoat that formed part of his travelling gear, here is a letter for you. It arrived at Carthage before you were quite up to the mark of attending to business, and I put it aside, and forgot it, until I fished it out in hunting for my truant sketch-book.'

The letter was from Richard Brownrigg. My old schoolfellow wrote very kindly and feelingly to say that he had heard, from my patron on the Board of the Assurance Company, to whom Willy had communicated the news immediately on my arrival, of my severe illness at Carthage. How sorry he was for my misfortune, Dick declared his own inability to make me understand; but the dear old fellow vowed that he could scarcely restrain himself from starting off across the plains (although no horseman, Fern, as you know), to nurse me in my fever. But he knew I was in better hands, and that Willy would prove as tender and thoughtful

as a woman.

As regarded the secretaryship, Brownrigg spoke very fairly indeed. He mentioned, modestly enough, that he had been the successful candidate. That result was inevitable, when my absence, and the great probability that I should succumb to the fever in that wild place, where neither good medical advice nor good drugs were attainable, had caused the directors to consider me as out of the race. Brownrigg was now secretary to the Phoenix Far West, but he diffidently protested that he took the preferment with many regrets and misgivings, and that he would not hope to do such justice to his principals as 'dear George Fern' would have done.

'I hope soon,' the lucky competitor wrote, "to see you in as good a financial position as that which I now occupy, nor shall any exertions of mine be spared to bring about a good turn of Fortune's wheel for one who so well deserves it. As it is, I shall do my best and earn my pay, all the time feeling that I stand in the shoes of a better man.'

'Now, Willy, did you ever see a more beautiful letter!' said I, quite warmly, when my brother, at my desire, had thrown his eyes over Dick's friendly epistle. But, to my surprise, my brother's knitted brows and pursed-up lips indicated a very different opinion.

'I don't quite agree with you, this time,' said Willy, drumming with his forefinger on the thwart beside him. Then, after a pause, he burst out in a perfect flame of anger. George, I can't speak with common patience of the fellow. You are basely deceived. A light breaks in upon me stronger and more strongly as I think things over. This very man, this Brownrigg, is the hidden foe we have so long been looking for!-he, and no other, wrote the letter that lured you to your ruin, and well nigh to your death!'

'What! Dick Brownrigg?' said I, incredulous, hurt. 'Don't speak thus, brother, of a dear old school-chum, of an honest worthy man. I would vouch for his integrity anywhere. He harm me! Impossible!'

But Willy was not to be silenced.

'I don't say,' he persisted, that it was Brownrigg's hand which traced the words of the letter, but you may be sure that his head planned the