"All right! Come up and get it!" I exulted. Making myself comfortable in a fork of the tree I proceeded with my little banquet, and before it was done I was derisively singing an old schoolboy refrain:
Feeling greatly refreshed I then picked the pears.
It was no easy job, for the top branches were long and slim, and as I swung around and took chances I felt that Calverly knew what he was talking about when he described the monkeys as clinging,
"With ape-like glee, By the teeth or tail or eyelid To the slippery mango tree."
While occupying my position of vantage I had a rush of primordial feelings that made me almost a believer in the Darwinian theory. It could be nothing but the stirring of some hereditary emotion that made me long to throw pears at the people below who were sending up exclamations of caution and advice. There would be a joy in it such as must have been felt by our ancestors when:
"Side by side 'twas theirs to ravage The potato ground and cut Down the unsuspecting savage With the well-aimed cocoanut."
Before my task was finished I was led to reflect that a prehensile tail must be a great advantage to a climber. Yet there can be no advantage without its penalty. I remember a joke in _Life_ about a monkey that was complaining because it had slipped and sprained its tail.
While picking the pears I had a chance to overlook the activities of the whole neighbourhood, but my interest was largely centred in my own cornfield, where a band of original Canadians, Indians, were busy husking. That corn had been hanging over me like an incubus, for I thought I would have to husk it all myself, but
"The red man came, the roaming hunter tribe,"
and I promptly made a treaty with them. But the consideration was not glass beads and red cotton handkerchiefs. Not at all. They are civilised--as civilised as an imported hired man. They insisted on getting five and a half cents a bushel--"and find themselves." Reflecting that even at that price I would not make much more than board wages, I agreed to pay. And as I looked at the cornfield from the pear tree I felt glad that I had done so, for real judges have estimated that there will be at least five hundred bushels. I will have enough to do in hauling home the ears and stalks. The piles of yellow ears delighted my eye, and then I noticed the golden sprinkling of pumpkins in the field, and I called down orders for pies. Somehow, in this country life our appetites are always with us.