Harper's Round Table, August 27, 1895 Part 13

"Grandma," said Ralph, "what did Uncle James go to Borneo for?"

"Well, I declare," answered Grandma; "who ever said that anybody ever went anywhere?"

"You did, Grandma, you know you did; you're trying now to get out of telling me a story."

"But telling you what he went to Borneo for isn't a story."

"No; but it's a good start for one," insisted Ralph.

"Well, then, he went there for his health, I believe," answered Grandma.

"What was the trouble with his health?"

"The doctor said he had indigestion."

"So he went to Borneo, did he?"

"Yes."

"But you are _so_ tantalizing, Grandma. Why is Borneo good for indigestion?"

"Well, the doctor advised him to exercise by riding horseback. He told your uncle that the shaking up which it would give him would be good for him. But he didn't like to ride, so he went to Borneo instead."

"Well, I don't understand it at all," and Ralph drew a long breath and looked deeply perplexed.

"Why, you see the earthquakes there come so often that they keep a person bouncing up and down just as if he were riding horseback all the time--so your uncle said. He would often tell, too, of what a good place it was to sleep, because there are three or four earthquakes every night which toss you up and turn you over and save you the trouble."

"I don't hardly _think_ I'd like it," said Ralph.

"Perhaps not," returned Grandma. "It makes some people nervous. He said himself that it was the most fidgety and excitable island that he was ever on. It would be a good place to play jackstones--don't you think so?--the earthquake would toss 'em for you, and all you'd have to do would be to hold out your hand and look on."

Ralph smiled a little, then he said, "_Now_ tell me the story about Uncle James and Borneo."

"Oh, dear; I thought perhaps you'd forgotten that. Well, you know Borneo is full of wild animals--lions and tigers and leopards and hyenas and jackals and ant-eaters and chimpanzees and--"

"What are jimpansies?" asked Ralph.

"Chimpanzees are a big kind of monkey--you've seen pictures of them.

Your uncle James noticed that during every earthquake the animals were shaken all over the country. They would go rattling and rolling around on the ground everywhere, like pop-corn in a popper. He looked at the wild-animal-market reports in the newspapers and saw that they brought good prices to sell to circuses and park museums, so he made up his mind to catch a few ship-loads and send them back to this country.

"The first thing he did was to hire a hundred Chinamen. He set them at work digging a big hole in the ground. He made it two hundred feet long, a hundred feet wide, and twenty-five feet deep; and when it was all done he went home to his bamboo house and waited for a big earthquake. In a day or two one came. It shook the animals out of the woods till the ground was all covered with them, rolling about everywhere. There was every kind of animal, from wild dogs and porcupines to elephants and hippopotami. They soon began to roll into the hole, and as the earthquake kept on it gradually filled up. Pretty soon it was full, and ferocious and bloodthirsty beasts were boiling up out of it just like foam out of a gla.s.s of soda-water--so I remember your uncle said. Then just as the earthquake stopped he went out with the Chinamen and put a big net over the hole, and staked it down all around; and there he had a hundred thousand bushels of fresh wild animals.

"As soon as he could, your uncle began to take out the animals and load them into freight cars to ship to the coast. He didn't get them out any too soon, either, because the earthquake had rattled all of the little ones to the bottom and the big ones to the top, and the little fellows were pretty nearly smothered. One chimpanzee was so cross over being squeezed that he hit an orang-outang on the nose, and if the men hadn't separated them there would have been a serious fight. There were a few natives mixed with the animals, so your uncle said; but he sorted them out very carefully, because he didn't want the folks he sold them to to say that he was trying to adulterate his animals with natives."

"That's a very _interesting_ story," said Ralph, "but it seems to me that it is a pretty hard story to believe."

"It seems that way to me, too," replied Grandma. "But I suppose that is because we never travelled in distant lands. Perhaps when you grow up you can go to Borneo and see if you can find the hole in which your uncle caught the animals."

H. C.

At a recent School Board examination in India, where the task was an essay to be written on boys, the following was handed in by a girl of twelve years:

"The boy is not an animal, yet they can be heard to a considerable distance. When a boy hollers he opens his big mouth like frogs; but girls hold their tongue till they are spoke too, and then they answer respectable and tell just how it was. A boy thinks himself clever because he can wade where it is deep; but G.o.d made the dry land for every living thing, and rested on the seventh day. When the boy grows up he is called a husband, and then he stops wading, but the grew-up girl is a widow and keeps house."