"For God's sake, children dear, will you stop breaking my heart!"
"Death and terror on the land!" prophesied the lion.
"Death and terror on the sea!" promised the great white bear.
"My dears, will you let me put sense at you? Will you listen to me a moment?" the angel pleaded. "'T is for your own sakes I ask. Will you just listen?
"What will become of you if you do all this?
"Don't you know that man will come against you with all his weapons and mechanical contrivances, his poison gas and his torpedoes, and wipe you off the face of your own earth? Childer dear, you have no idea of the terrible fellow he is at all. Myself, angel and all as I am, when I see some of those fellows coming hell-for-leather in their motor-cars, I leap like a hare out of their way, I do so. And oftentimes I 'm shaking in the legs for hours after it. I don't mind telling you. He 'll kill you surely, childer dear."
"He 'll kill us anyway," fluted the elephant. "What matter to-day or to-morrow or a century from now? We die. What of the Irish elk, with horns like banners, so proud in his green pastures? What of the great buffalo, lord of the plains?--where is he? If we die, let us die together, fighting shoulder to shoulder!"
"Besides, maybe it's worse than man you 'd have."
"What is worse than man?"
"Maybe God Himself would come down against you, maybe," the angel's voice falls to a sacred whisper; "maybe He will uncover His face!"
There is a movement of awe, or terror among the animals. The silent multitude back of the speakers rustles like leaves. The lion speaks:
"Even that we will brave, if we cannot have justice."
For a little while they look at one another in awed tension. The animals are frightened, the angel is frightened. One would think they were terrified by their temerity, and were awaiting the avenging thunder of God. The angel plucks up courage. He gives a little nervous laugh.
"Now, here we are, my dear little people, making fools of ourselves as usual; letting our feelings run away with us. You 'd think it was at a political meeting you were, with you giving out manifestos and ultimatums, and wanting to die.
"Let us get down, now, to facts. Let us examine what material we have, and draw deductions.
"We were all agreed that we are here by the wisdom of God, and being here in that wise, are subject to his wishes in every way. Even old Go-by-the-ground--" he looks at the crocodile--"knows that."
"Now, from what I 've heard from the angels who are higher up,--from them, let me tell you, that are absolutely on the inside,--God designs to make out of man the perfect being. He intends to combine your bravery--" he turns to the lion--"and your wisdom--" to the elephant--"with your beauty"; he is addressing the tiger.
"What about me?" champs the crocodile.
"Och, be damned to you! Man," he goes on didactically, "is essentially a creature of progress. He is the only being that builds houses--"
From the background comes a shrill squeak from the beaver.
"I mean houses with rooms--"
There is the angry droning of bees.
"What I mean is this: houses with fireplaces and pots and pans and what not. None of us will deny," he finishes lamely, "the enormous progress of man."
"I deny it," the lion stormed. "Can I forget the great black armies of the South, the glistening men with the silver armlets and the short keen spears? Not even of me were they afraid, those! Their drums resounded through veldt and plain, They asked only of the earth what they needed for their good. And when they hunted they hunted fair. They matched their strength against our speed. And their knowledge against our knowledge. And at night they sang and they danced beneath the moon.
"And now they are farm servants to the men who come overseas. They are not clean, as they once were. Their bodies that once were naked and glistening are caked with mud and covered with rags. And some of them are driven into the bowels of the earth, and the sunlight and the moonlight they were born to is kept from them. And they dig diamonds for men who are not satisfied with the luster of stars. And they who once fought me in the open with a spear now skulk with a gun."
"I remember an India that was," the tiger snarled, "a land of rajahs and temples, of brown dancing girls and men who played little flutes. They grew the green sugar-cane, and cotton they might spin on great wooden wheels. And their smiths hammered brass into strange antique shapes. And they worshiped God with singing and dancing in cool temples.
"What are the rajahs now, that once were the wonder of the earth, but little helot princes? And the ranees--the cinnamon-colored queens with the minute silver bells upon their bud-like toes--but despised native women? Are the bazaars filled with the quaint work of smiths? No, but with the meretricious trinkets of the West. And black-coated men seek to turn them from native immemorial gods. And the machine that throws pictures the mummers make, fights against the music and the dancing and the temple bells.
"The beauty I stand for is passing away."
"In Burma, whence I come," said the elephant, "there are jungles deeper than the jungle of Africa, or the Indian jungles. Great mossy trees, and painted flowers, and great brown rivers rolling to the sea. And the men there are beautiful as women, and the women beautiful as flowers.
"And once they paddled down the great brown river in glistening black canoes. They wore great gaudy sashes and had a flower in their teeth or a flower in their hair. Under the shadow of the great trees they paddled. And when they saw me they made reverence, saying, 'Our lord, the elephant!' On little reeds they made sweet, plaintive music.
"And now the great ancient trees are being cut down, and floated on the bosom of the hurt brown rivers. And the peace of the jungle is disturbed with the cough of the motor-boat, and oil is heavy on the warm jungle smells. And the men, beautiful as women, are clothed in soiled white garments; the rounded child-like bodies of the brown women chafe under a huddle of clothes. And when I am observed, the white man asks, demands, the help of the little brown men to hunt me, to whom they once did reverence, and I seem to hear no more sweet, plaintive music.
"From the quiet river I have seen the painted barges of the Pharaohs move along under the sweeps of the negro slaves. Color and majesty and dignity. And the shaven priests chanted their litanies at the change of the moon. And from the Sahara the desert tribes brought tribute and treasure to Egypt, the men with the white horses and the black tents. And the nodding dromedaries and camels and their tinkling bells. And the kings raised their pyramids, and the multitude of men like ants listened at sunrise to the great masonic prayer. And they left the Sphinx to denote their mystery. And Cleopatra, who was Lilith reborn, played with Rome for a doll.
"All these things have I seen: the magic of great Moses, and the flight of the Little God of Galilee; the perfumed Pharaohs; the sinister yellow priests; the gnarled masons at their secret prayers; and Cleopatra brown as a berry, magnificent as jewels, venomous as a snake; and the sculptor at work on the Sphinx.
"And now tourists unwrap the great kings, and hucksters chaffer where once the trains of the prince-merchants of Tyre passed, and we shall never see a Cleopatra any more.
"But I am not complaining. Men do not swim as well as in the elder days, nor handle a boat as surely."
"I know nothing of painted Pharaohs," said the great white bear, "nor anything of Indian queens. In the North are neither kings nor masons, but day and night and ice, and a little people. In summer is the great sun, white light, and grass that is green for a little, and the thunder of breaking bergs, and in winter no sun but the flaming aurora and the white illimitable miles!
"And the swarthy little people were happy then. In the long nights they sang, and they bowed to the gods in boulder and stream, and set out in the little kayaks on the Arctic seas to hunt the great solemn walrus, or they set off in sledges through the pathless wastes. They were a brave people, a healthy people.
"And came the boats hunting our sister the whale, and the whales taught the little swarthy people progress, and everywhere now they are cunning and degraded and crusted with sin, and a great plague makes them spit blood, and waste to nothingness, and die."
They all looked at the horse, but the horse was silent.
"Look back in the folds of your memory," the lion prompted. "Look back well! Can you not remember the great races in the Roman circus? Listen a little! Can you not hear the trumpets of Agincourt?"
"And you, little brother--" the bear swung his ponderous head toward the dog--"was there not a time when you lay before a fire in a rush-strewn hall? And now the houses are too little. They tell me--I do not know. And did you not once run barking joyously beside man on his horse? And now horses are out of fashion, are they not, little comrade? And the cars are too fast for your short legs."