Toney, Tom, and the Professor were at the railway and witnessed the departure of Love, Dove, and Bliss with manifest regret. They turned away and walked for some moments in profound silence, when Seddon exclaimed,--
The cosmopolite approached them at a hurried pace, and apparently in much excitement. He was introduced to the Professor, and then Toney inquired about the condition of his health.
"I am physically well, Mr. Belton," said Bragg, "but am mentally afflicted."
"Indeed!" said Toney. "I trust that there has been no serious cause for this disturbance of your usual equanimity."
"I have met with a great, I fear an irreparable, loss," said Bragg.
"A ship foundered at sea without any insurance on her?" inquired the Professor.
"Alas!" exclaimed Tom Seddon in pathetic tones, "is the monkey no more?"
"Is he dead?" said Toney, apparently in great anxiety to learn its fate.
"I know not," said Bragg. "He is missing. I have searched for him in vain."
"He may have run away and escaped over Mason and Dixon's line," said the Professor. "Could you not reclaim him under the fugitive slave law?"
"That monkey would never have run away, Mr. Tickle. I have fed him and protected him, and he could never have been guilty of such gross folly and base ingratitude."
"A negro, who is clothed and fed and protected, will occasionally run off from a comfortable home, and why not a monkey?" said Seddon.
"A negro may run away from the mush-pot of his master because he is a slave, and is impelled by a natural and laudable desire for liberty. But my monkey was not a slave, Mr. Seddon. He was a friend and a companion. Monkeys and apes, Mr. Tickle, have emotions and sentiments. All they lack is the power of speech to give expression to their thoughts and feelings."
"They sometimes, though rarely, have that faculty," said the Professor. "On one occasion I heard a venerable baboon express himself in emphatic and excellent English."
"It was in Kentucky," said the Professor, "There was a traveling menagerie exhibiting in a small village. A number of negroes were examining the baboon with much curiosity, and one of them insisted that he could talk but would not, because if he did the white people would put him to work, and he was too lazy to work. I was present and heard the baboon indignantly exclaim, 'You lie, you ugly, nasty nigger! I am not as lazy as you are! Begone! or I'll bite your nose off!' The Africans tore a hole in the tent in their efforts to get out."