# On the Beliefs and Convictions of Guinea-Pigs

From Harper's Magazine, Apr 1919
    There is a wide-spread belief that guinea-pigs are, of all animals, the most stupid. Yet for the most part it may be mere gossip and hearsay. Where is the man who has cared to investigate the matter seriously and report whether the popular belief is truth or, as in many another instance, only vulgar error? I have looked for him in vain. Indeed, it is because of this that I have constituted and delegated myself envoy to report upon the matter.
On the Beliefs and Convictions of Guinea-Pigs
BY LAURA SPENCER PORTOR
Author of "On the Disappointments and Vicissitudes of Mice"
THERE is, so far as I know, but one question which haunts the mind of man eternally—"Am I right or wrong?"—and I am inclined to think that our knowledge and our wisdom, and charity as well, may all be measured largely by the heed that we give to it. For a man's ethics, morals, science, and social customs are all but parts of a fundamental uncertainty, and flow back into it as rivers and rills back into the sea where they originate.
One of the rivers, so to speak, beside which I have passed some of my most speculative hours is that one which has its rise in a somewhat fantastic country—namely, that borderland where our own lives blend, as it were, imperceptibly, with those of what we call the "lower orders." What are our duties to animals and theirs to us? What are their opinions of us, and ours of them? How just are these? There is, to take a most common instance, a wide-spread belief that guinea-pigs are, of all animals, the most stupid. Yet for the most part it may be mere gossip and hearsay. Where is the man who has cared to investigate the matter seriously and report whether the popular belief is truth or, as in many another instance, only vulgar error? I have looked for him in vain. Indeed, it is because of this that I have constituted and delegated myself envoy to report upon the matter.
In my early childhood I loved animals as all children do, yet was denied any of my very own. This was due to the fact that we were a large family. Each of us would, of course, have liked to own individually several pets, but this was not to be thought of. It was deemed sufficiently liberal that we were permitted to own between us one dog, one cat, two canaries (not to mention barn-yard animals), a succession of mocking-birds, white mice, varying numbers and dynasties of pet chickens, and a poll parrot.
It cannot be said the collective ownership was satisfactory. The pets were dreadfully spoiled. Not a one of them knew a whit about obedience. At the hands of all of us, that extremely mixed broth which might have been called their education was certainly spoiled. The varying moods and collective characters of the owners, their cross-purpose pettings and scoldings, commands and counter-commands, were sufficient to demolish all discipline, corrupt all morals, and permanently unseat the logic of even the most promising pets. The dog, bewildered at first, took it all, finally, as a huge joke, laughed a great deal of the time, and became an irresponsible wag. The cat, in keeping with her temperament, exhibited haughty indifference most of the while, or played us off one against the other. It is true she would sometimes lick your fingers with every show of a gentle and selective affection, but there was no counting on her. I have known her, when your own had misunderstood you, and your heart was fair bursting in your breast, when, if she had given you the slightest inducement, you would have hid your tears in her fur—I have known her to stretch and yawn and walk away to another part of the hearth-rug, and, after a moment's indifferent observation of the fire, arch her neck and begin the laundering of her own shirt-bosom, as though that were—and it probably was—the only thing in the world that interested her.
The parrot might almost have satisfied me, for she was a bird of much character. Her cage hung low, and she was very willing to swing herself by her beak and queer, awkward claws to the near corner of it to argue impartially with you, but early in my career with her I made the fatal mistake of once giving her tail a sharp pull when she was profoundly engaged in a nap.
The result was all I could have hoped, and made my blood run cold with delight, but she never forgave me. They say they live to a great age, and have wonderful memories; and I have sometimes thought that when all my follies and presumptions are ended and nil nisi bonum is spoken of me even by my enemies, that old green bird will probably still remember and cherish against me the fact that I once took that unwarrantable liberty with her tail, and will be ready to dispute with a squawk of fine disdain the gentle and perhaps even flattering opinion of the others.
Matters were then at this standstill for quite a long time and there seemed no hope of improvement. I should perhaps never have become an original investigator of animals and an authority upon guinea-pigs but for the fact that an admirer of my eldest sister gave her in full devotion a pair of ring-doves. Who could have foreseen or prophesied anything so delightful? There they were! While I ate my mush and milk in innocency, and went to bed as usual and slept unsuspecting, and looked forward to no particular future beyond the horizon of the next day, the stars in their courses prepared this event of such real significance. For this gift, given only with the hope of affecting the destiny of the donor, and certainly with no thought of me, yet, in conjunction with some planetary affairs in my own horoscope, was destined to mark a new epoch for me.
The doves were indeed the most lovely creatures imaginable. Their pretty pink feet were the culmination and epitome of all daintiness. The gentle sheen of their breasts and wings; the incredible neatness and order of their plumage—the way they were able to ruffle it and make tailed balls of themselves at will, and the next moment have their feathers as smooth and themselves as shapely as ever; their bright-rimmed, round eyes and the meditative or disdainful film that sometimes drooped over them; the way, too, it snapped up and disappeared if, following on their disdain, they were frightened or heard some unaccustomed noise; the marvel and delicacy of the bending of their necks that literally flowed with color; the way they were able to attend carefully or intently, not by means of gross organs of hearing, which they appeared not to have at all, but by a mere magical listening poise of the head; their way of pausing and going on again; their gentle voices; the way they had of raising a foot and with what daintiness setting it neatly again on the floor of their cage as though to the delicate measure of some unheard melody!
And when they spoke! Ah, there was indeed then music in that part of the veranda! What plaintive sounds that called the heart out of you. But that which I loved best, oh, very best! was the distinction that lay in those delicate rings about their necks. Where but in Saturn, and even there not to the naked eye, shall you find a match for them? How came they there? What meaning had they? Indeed, these seemed to me a kind of enchanted fowl. I fell asleep in the moonlight remembering them, deliciously aware that below-stairs in the dusk of the deep veranda, with the odor of moonflowers all about them, they slept like two doves in a magician's story; and, many a time, half expecting, half dreading to find them gone, I trotted down in the broadlit morning to look at them, amazed to find that creatures so marvelous were yet there.
It was not long before my sister, gentle herself and dovelike, had their confidence so entirely that they would come out of the cage onto her finger; and it could not have been more than a month I think, if that, before they were so well pleased to belong to her that they would fly to her, perching one on either shoulder, and would crane forward their pretty iridescent necks that they might take a bit of bread which she held for them between her lips.
But the matter of real moment in the advent of these lovely creatures lay in the fact that the old law prohibiting private ownership had been at last broken. In the establishment of this delightful precedent I saw the possibility of a pair of doves for myself—to be all mine as entirely as these were hers. I carried the matter ecstatically to my mother. She received it with somewhat less ecstasy. She considered it, however, as she considered all my suggestions, but it ended by her saying, though with great gentleness, that she thought one pair of ring-doves was enough.
Perhaps she saw that this disappointent was almost more than I could bear, for the next day she herself offered me an alternative. How would I like to have something else?
"Oh, but, Mother, what else!"
For me, there was nothing else.
"Well," said my mother, gently, "how would you like a pair of guinea-pigs?"
It is certain I should never have thought of them myself—they were at the extreme nadir of my desires. Yet the very surprise was something. Indeed, I am inclined to think it was this that was the sealing of my fate. There seems to me now something a little pathetic in all this. I had had in my mind's dear desire a pair of doves—ring-doves at that—of my very own, and fate was in this manner doing away with them from the cradle of my fancy and placing there instead two changeling guinea-pigs.
Within a week's time there they were in a little habitat, half cage, half hut, on the veranda. Well, I was ecstatic enough, after all. It is true they insisted upon crowding together and putting their noses tight in the corner, as though to get away as far as possible; nevertheless, the unspoiled fact remained, they were my own.
The members of my family came presently to see, and stood about my province. There were, besides, my cousin Portor and my cousin Hays Hamilton, who were guests with us at the time. Observations and suggestions were made, some of them facetious, especially from my cousin Hays, who was kindly but loved a joke. He suggested that the guinea-pigs should have really fine names, and offered "Anthony and Cleopatra" as suitable, or, if not, then "Hero and Leander." I preferred the former suggestion and took it under consideration. Meantime, I heard my cousin Portor say. "They are cunning, but aren't they stupid-looking little things!"
That evening I went to my cousin Hays, put my hand in his, and said, shyly.
"Cousin Hays, please don't let Cousin Portor say they are stupid."
"But maybe they are," he said, with the little whimsicality that had always endeared him to me.
Perhaps my look begged him not to go too far.
"Well, I love them, anyway!" I said, stoutly.
And I remember his saying, with ruminating gentleness.
"Ah, well, that is a different matter."
I loved them, indeed. The heart of a child is adaptable, and the mind, when it is young, a marvelously adjustable instrument. Doves I should have preferred, but it was not so to be. By the dispensation and disposal of fate, I was to possess guinea-pigs. Well, so be it. I loved them, I adored them with childish ecstasy. Oh, the dears! Oh, the darlings! Here was occasion for spending my stored affections. They should know and behold how I loved them.
I set myself the delightful task of getting acquainted with them. I devoted myself to them, and let no one else bring them their food. I spoke with affection and enthusiasm; yet they persistently hid themselves in the dark part of the hutch and would stay there literally for hours. Nothing I could say altered their determination. They could not be coaxed nor persuaded. I took all this very personally. They would have nothing to do with me—with me, mind you, whose very own they were!
After a day of most devoted effort on my part, spent chiefly on my knees, and of persistent rebuff on theirs, spent altogether with their noses hid in a dark corner, I sought out my cousin Hays and stated the case, necessarily in my own favor.
He listened with whimsical sympathy and suggested that perhaps, without realizing it, I might have been a little noisy in their vicinity. Perhaps their ears were of a peculiarly delicate construction; it might be I had not spoken to them in a soft enough voice.
Perhaps, perhaps! I grasped at that. I was as willing, as eager, as Bottom to adapt myself to my role. If I had been noisy, then quiet I could and would be. Had my tones perhaps been a trifle loud? (Ah, the delightful, delicate construction of their ears!) Well, then, like Bottom I would speak in "a monstrous little voice"; I, too, would roar "as 'twere any nightingale." Let but the next day come and witness.
But despite my tiptoeings and diminutive voice and delicate offerings, the second day saw no improvement. They would have nothing, nothing to do with me. They said not a syllable; they merely kept their noses in a dark corner, as though this were better comment than any words. They merely repudiated me.
Meantime, in delicate and dreadful contrast, the ring-doves came daintily out of their cage for their afternoon recreation and cooed gently with intimate pleasure on my sister's hand and shoulder. With a kind of desperation I got down on my knees and peered into the hutch for some hopeful sign. Not a symptom of change. In a spirit of resignation and forgiveness I put a carrot in the cage and got behind a porch pillar to watch the result. But, no, they should not touch it while I was there. I went away at last. By and by when I came back, the carrot was gone. I would have thought it had been spirited away, but for a shred they had overlooked; but they themselves were as before, in the same unwilling mood, in the inner dark part of the hutch, noses to the wall, there they remained.
With a heart a good deal shaken, I went again to my cousin Hays. He was usually fully as resourceful as Puss-in-Boots. But he had, evidently, nothing to suggest.
"Oh, I wouldn't worry," he said. "They'll get more friendly, maybe, by and by." And then it seems he was unable to resist propounding gravely that guinea-pig proposition in Euclid of ancient and unknown origin. "I'd be very careful, if I were you," he said, with great gravity, "not to pick them up by the tail, for if you do their eyes will fall out."
I was horrified at the mere thought. Then, too, there was something fatally reminiscent in this of former shortcomings concerning the parrot.
"Oh, I wouldn't for the world!" I said, with a fervency that gratified him and made him unaccountably merry.
The story of the next week's effort is too long to tell in full. I spared no pains, I left no course untried, no device or inducement unessayed—I cannot think Jacob at Peniel was more resolved than I. They remained stubborn. They held me strange; they would not be won.
I even rebuked myself for impatience. I made invalid excuses for them as one does for those one loves. They had treated me shabbily, but I still loved them. I left them carrot valentines and lettuce tributes while they slept; I spoke to them in a voice which must have been acceptable to a fairy; I gave them more inducement to speak than I had ever given even to my dolls. It cannot be said I lacked faith either in them or myself. No; if anything, I had too much, not too little, faith.
I exhausted kindness to wait upon them. I talked philosophy to them of my own kind. I carried my troubles to them; I sang them songs—"Little drops of water, little grains of sand"; also my dolls' lullaby, transposed from my own lullaby days, "Hush, my child, lie still and slumber"; "Go Tell Aunt Rhody," too, with its tragic announcement concerning the death of the "old gray goose" and its practical ending about plucking all the feathers "to make a feather-bed." Poetry, religion, philosophy, economics—what would they? But, "for this, for everything," they were out of tune."—"It moved them not." Once I pointed out to them the slender young moon. "There's the new moon up there," I said, softly.
I tell all this merely so that it will be seen I neglected nothing. One night I put a moonflower in their cage while they were sleeping, thinking they might come out and look at it, relent, and be converted. Once, just before I went to bed, I slipped softly out on the veranda. It was a marvelous white spring night and the pear-trees were in bloom, and I knew with a dim, wonderful knowledge that in the grass yonder beneath them hundreds of purple violets deepened the delicate shadows. Meantime, the moonlight had made its way softly between the leaves and spaces of the grape-arbor, and stood there silent, along the outer half of the veranda, glorious in pale motley, as might Harlequin have stood—with white Pierrot at a little distance—gazing into the deep dusk at Columbine asleep. Oh! the night, and the beauty and the wonder to stir any heart in the world! I tiptoed to the guinea-pigs' hutch and bent down in the perfect stillness. "Oh, you darlings!" I said in a whisper. "I do love you!"
Silence! not the tiniest sound. My heart overflowed with affection. Well, Heaven bless them! Perhaps they slept.
I do not recall how long my unrequited devotion persisted, but I am not one to give up easily, and I am inclined to think it stretched over a really long season. What I do recall is the turn that affairs took one day.
From somewhere I had acquired by chance or merit, or it may have been mere bounty, a delightful book; a little one, with a paper cover, charming colored illustrations, and a general air of distinction. I rejoiced in it a few moments by myself, turning the delectable pages slowly like a connoisseur; then I flew down to the veranda to share it with Anthony and Cleopatra. I opened it at the loveliest of the pictures and showed this to them. They ran to the other side of the cage. I went to the other side of the cage myself, and proffered it to them anew. They declined, and hopped back to where they had been. I went back myself, with some firmness, and tried once more. They absolutely refused, and put their noses tight in the corner. It was as though here we took our stand. This was to be Waterloo and the sunken road. They were resolved to leave me in no doubt.
I sat back a moment, contemplating, realizing. Then a strange thing happened. I had a sudden entire revulsion of feeling. My anciently professed affection, my long-suffering patience, dropped from me. These were a stiff-necked people. They were no longer worthy to be loved. I would withdraw my favor from them. Let them receive their deserts. I would smite them in my sore displeasure. I waved the book fiercely at them and rattled it against the bars.
As suddenly, their prim indifferent ways fell from them as a cloak. They leaped up and flew about the cage, their hind feet hopping madly after their fore-feet in such a way as I would not have thought possible. I followed up my advantage. I gave the book a bang on the top of the cage! Skies above! They crouched! Another! Good heavens! Another! Stars and moons! They tore hither and yon, thither, whither! back and forth! Everywhere! Nowhere! They stopped in midflight, whirled and went in the other direction. Still another! Bang! Merciful Providence! They fled into a corner, one might say fell upon their knees! Their hind legs quivered! They hid their faces, as it were, against this retributive and awful Jehovah in pinafores and strapped slippers. I dragged the book once across the bars with a terrible retreating rumble of angry and withdrawing thunder. They burrowed their noses deeper, deeper. No one with an imagination but would have known they begged to be delivered! But I was in no relenting humor. Let them pray! Zipp! Bang! Once more! If they had been indifferent, here was cause for attention; if afraid, well, there was at least some warrant. I believed this to be a more just and orderly world than the other.
It is a truism that children and young people are cruel, having had no experience of suffering. Nothing could induce me to do such a thing now. I have been terrified myself by superior powers and have crouched under some retributive thunders prevalent in my own very personal skies. I have grown soft-hearted and, to an extent at least, merciful. Yet I still think that, however mistaken and cruel these rough tactics of mine may seem to older years and the philosophic mind, yet from the standpoint of a perfectly good-natured, chubby, friendly little girl, bent on loving and being loved and whose affection had been rejected, they were in a large measure excusable, perhaps even justifiable.
Later I repented to a certain extent. But I never really loved them again. It could not be but my cousin Portor was right. They were stupid little things! Oh, they were, they were! Let no one henceforth talk to me of guinea-pigs, nor bring hearsay or rumor to enlighten me!
Yet it may be objected that all this is too personal an experience to serve for general testimony. Might I not have misjudged, undervalued, misunderstood these two?—approached them from a wrong angle? But I cannot think that the behavior of guinea-pigs which, in the persons of Anthony and Cleopatra, was directed so pointedly toward me, really varies much in its other manifestations. I have known other and indeed the most adorable children rejected as persistently by other guinea-pigs nameless or of different cognomen. A true prince of the blood the other day, a beautiful little boy of five, and fit to have the sun rise for him only, confided to me—whispering it to me in fatuous consideration of their feelings—that his guinea-pigs did nothing but eat and sleep all day and would not be taught, despite all his efforts, to answer to their names.
I knew an astute nurse whose small charge was master of another pair. Whenever he was sullen, indifferent, or in her eyes stupid, her rebuke always took one form. "Come, Master Charles, don't be a guinea-pig!"
I recall also a pair of guinea-pigs on whom much affection had been lavished, who were witness one night to the burning of their master's home. Some one had remembered to set them away in a place of safety. There they sat illuminated, and by the light of the very glare that should have lent them sympathetic horror, they, in comfort and indifference, demolished three carrots, and then retired and went to sleep as though nothing in the world of any moment to them were happening.
Another two were let out of their hutch into the garden. It was thought it would please them; and, after all, two such tiny creatures could not do much harm to the cabbages or lettuce. Each hid immediately under a melon-leaf, and their owners courteously retired to give them more perfect freedom. I do not believe they touched a mouthful. What they did do was to make off to Heaven knows what friends and confederates. They never returned. Not a cabbage but was searched, beet-tops, salsify spears, feathery carrot greens, the banners of the young corn, skirts of the kale, strawberry-vines—all were brushed this way or that way, rudely or anxiously, by all the children of the house, bent, but with diminishing hope, on finding their lost pets. But, no; not hide nor hair of the ingrates was to be found. They had preferred to take their chances with weasels and foxes of the near-by woods to staying longer with human kind.
Yet, after all, here enters uncertainty! Does all this more prove my point or theirs? Can it be a behavior so habitual, so general and well agreed on, is without particular meaning? Can it be supposed all this happens by mere coincidence? Does it not rather point to some definite belief or persuasion—perhaps to some strong conviction on their part? It looks to me like a formulated faith or dogma. Here is every air of something covertly sworn to. Let humans behave as they choose, these will stick to their reserve and their carrots. It appears to me that their persistent refusal to be won bodes something, as silence too long maintained becomes ominous. What have they seen? What deductions have they drawn? Of what are they so tenaciously persuaded?
I think it not unlikely they have come to some rather sharp conclusions in their secret conferences. I think it presumable they have there discussed our wars and secret diplomacies, our bull-fights, teas, and social charities; the cruelty of our children and young people, the weary indifference and selfishness of our old ones; the mock humanity of our jeweled ladies and overfed gentlemen delivering themselves of pity concerning starving peoples. Might there not be in all this some accounting for their taciturnity and fixed rejection of us? Is there not reason enough here why a sculpin has a more animated eye?
Then, too, can it be doubted that our dealings with their fellow-creatures have left their opinions uninfluenced?
"Have you marked, "says one of them, looking gravely over his spectacles at the others, "how, if an animal shows anything in ways or manner that reminds these people of themselves, they believe him to be of a superior order? How they congratulate him, and try to press their culture further upon him, and are at pains to teach him anything that shall increase the resemblance?
The rest nod solemnly. Yes, they have observed.
"Have you noticed"—raising his head, and looking very tellingly, under his spectacles this time—"how they read their sentimentality into the behavior of animals, and how they insist on sympathizing with them at tactless moments?"
Good heavens! I realize suddenly that here is something personal to me, and in the portfolio under his front paw I can hardly doubt he has it on record how I myself began this practice early. It was a turtle I rescued when I was about six years old. It had been tied by the leg by its enthusiastic discoverer and then forgotten and left in that truly terrible plight for twenty-four hours. Oh, the tragedy I made of this! How I congratulated myself and was congratulated by my family for having delivered him from this pit! Did I ask what his real sentiments were in the matter? Not at all. I judged only by what I should have felt under a like calamity, tied by the leg to a post all day and night, unable to go to my distracted loved ones. Yet in such a judgment it must be admitted there was neither logic nor testimony to uphold me. If my premise had been correct, would he, do you think, have made no sign, shown no emotion? Is it thinkable he would not have fallen on my neck or at least have pressed my hand? Whereas, rather, he withdrew, front and hind legs, hauling and pulling his house away, as though he wished to have nothing to do with me, or sensed perhaps that this was but another mood of the original who had tied him. As to his terrible anxiety when, in the night watches, he thought of how they missed him at home—who knows? Perhaps he had quarreled with his wife, or she may have been a slattern; and a good excuse, and no responsibility on his part, to stay under the clean stars may have been a godsend and may have given him fresh courage to take up life's burden once more.
"Have you noted," says one of the delegates, turning the pages of his note-book for his references—"have you observed what these human mortals call the 'education of animals'?"
Another member rises to his feet, for this touches him nearly. He puts his hands on the table, leans forward on them, and looks all around.
"Yes," he says, tellingly. "E-duc-ated!—Led out of what!"
Ah, that is enough! You begin to see, you begin to understand and recall! Have you never in your childhood had your tippet fastened about your neck and your hat set upon your head, that you might go to see trained and well "educated" horses, noble creatures to begin with, bow and wheel and trot and rear and kneel and dance and pray at the crack of the whip of the ring-master in riding-boots and top-hat? Have you not seen them petted for their amenability, as they eat docilely out of the hand of authority? Yes, and there were some adults in the audience, too!
And will you tell me you have never gone in holiday humor, to see captive "wild" beasts tamed to perform incredible human feats (the posters that brought you show honestly enough bears on bicycles and roller-skates, and other wonders)—have you never gone to see these and to watch elephants make fools of themselves, and waited after the performance to give them peanuts in token of your delighted approval?
Meantime the guinea-pig to the right of the chairman is speaking.
"Perhaps some of the other members of this assembly will have noted the pride with which human beings are wont to look upon what they call their domestication of animals. They have subdued and triumphed over them, yes. But what can be said of their peace terms? Have you examined into the case of the dog? They point out how under their teaching he has become faithful." Telling oratorical pause. The speaker thrusts his fingers between the buttons of his vest and waits. "Faithful!" he repeats the word, raising his eyebrows. He looks all round. Then, pointedly, "Aye, but to whom!"
This, you see gives one pause. It sets one thinking of other cases, too, fully as striking. After all, when I have seen—as no man has lacked seeing—the horse goaded and galled, and lashed beneath a load he can scarce stagger under, I am not entirely persuaded the chilly stall and hostler's jargon and the scant bag of oats really pay for these honors. When I see a cat on the stone steps of a city mansion left to starve, while the family of its adoption goes away for the summer, I am not so sure the aforetime pettings and dishes of milk offset the pangs of immediate hunger and present humiliation.
You see I have thought of these things even before the guinea-pig with his hand in his vest rose to speak. I have thought more than once, too, of the fate of our domestic fowls. Are they bred to such safety, after all? The agreement reads generously enough. They are to live like the most luxurious invalids. The women are to be relieved altogether of the croodling anxieties, the nervous and fluffed worriments of motherhood; entire societies, educated for the purpose, will look after and educate their children for them; nurseries and brooder schools are maintained at no apparent cost to the beneficiaries; the individual is relieved of all care. It is worthy of Lycurgus, and sounds like a perfectly good, even if a somewhat cold, bargain. But I doubt if the original delegates could have read the last clause carefully. Did they fully understand it when they signed the agreement, or were some trickery and flimflam resorted to?
We have lured the wild turkeys, a great deal against their will, and have forced the benefits of our civilization upon them so that they may take part in the feasting of Christian families who sit about snowy, decorated tables at certain seasons, in the spirit of reunion, attentively awaiting the carving.
Well, to be brought in, far and away and by all odds the most ceremonial dish of the occasion—there is a certain splendor in it, if you like; I will admit that. But before I grant you any real benefit on the part of my client, I would like to get the testimony of the old wild turkey yet in all his feathers, and with a head still on his neck to put under his wing, still balancing himself with his unplucked tail in the wind under the winter stars, as I have seen him, in the topmost fox-proof branches. I should like to ask him if he would exchange Orion, Boötes, and Berenices for the somewhat less brilliant remarks of the company, or his freedom and the morrow for chestnut stuffing and giblet gravy.
Nor is this all, of course. The mind of any man could suggest new examples. What of the case of the cow? Have you looked into it? Have you recalled how generally it is agreed that six weeks' old veal is delicious? And bees? What of our raiding of their hives and confiscation of their secrets under warrant of God knows what convenient espionage act? Have we not taken over their accounts? Edited and audited their books as we deem fit? Look how we confuse and thwart them with a monstrous beating of tin pans when they annually make a new stand for freedom and we lead them away again into new captivity. Matters are better, it is true, than they used to be. There was a time when conscientious church-going people were wont to kill the better part of the swarm each winter, so as not to be at the expense of sparing them so much honey! That atrocity is at an end. It has been discovered that it is cheaper to keep them, after all, allowing them a certain small per cent, of their own products, just enough to live on, while all the larger share is given over to their enemies, the monopolists, sold at exorbitant prices, and the proceeds put in the bank, but not one penny to their credit. It is we, I fear, who are to account for the proverb. It cannot be said they were always so busy. I have seen them staggering home tired and drunk at eight o'clock of a midsummer evening, with the last sackful to enrich their employers. There was, no doubt, a time of old that tradition could tell about, before all this sweat-shop business was afoot, when a bee might have some individuality and some kind of family life for himself, some sort of pleasure of his own; when he could stretch his sticky legs comfortably of an evening and in a pair of loose pantouffles, unfold his newspaper leisurely, and read under his carefully adjusted spectacles, the latest doings in the bee and blossom world; when a young fellow, with a delicate taste for pleasure, might pause in a wayside trumpet-flower, or drink in a foxglove tavern without shame or hurry.
But gone, gone are all those times and fine prerogatives. Perhaps the guinea-pigs pondered on this in their meditative hours. Perhaps they were thinking of it that spring night when the moon shone so marvelous and the pear blossoms and violets bloomed lavish in the perfect stillness, and those two in the dark hutch would have nothing to do with me.
But blasting as all this evidence is, may not one member of the conclave who is a trifle backslidden from the stern retributive justice of the rest, rise to make some slightly mitigating suggestions? However unkindly we may have behaved toward our "inferiors," yet may it not be we have dealt with more consideration toward our own? Let us be given our dues! Several of them thereupon are sent forth to collect data. They come back staggering under huge note-books and compendiums of strange human crafts—envies, jealousies, cruelties, sweat-shop labor, politics, and prison atrocities. Do you think these have found among humankind no parallel of the bee? Have these not seen "human mortals" performing under the whip, also, of well-dressed convention, and taking their rewards meekly from the hand of authority in top-hat, wig, or miter?
In the light of all this, my own relations with them change from opaque experience to revelation and instruction. Is it possible, in those first days when they declined my devotion, they saw all my human failures to come like a scroll unrolled? Did they foresee that future day when I should fail my friend, or pass by one beaten and wounded on the way to Jericho? Can it be they had these things in mind when they sat with their noses to the wall? And the moon flower, too, did it seem to them in the presence of all this a piece of sickening sentimentality? And my effort at last to reduce them by means of fear and threats and visitations from hell—was all this no real surprise, but, rather, a fulfillment and a corroboration?
You see, if a man be but fair-minded, how his entire world of self-satisfaction may begin to totter. And the thing is likely to go from bad to worse, God knows, if we are resolved to be entirely honest; for the truthful man must admit that at times he is forced to uphold these guinea-pig doubts and subscribe to these guinea-pig suspicions. Has not he, too, noted the insincerities and the mockeries and withdrawn himself and kept a comparable silence? Has not he also basked in the sun of affection and later seen it unaccountably withdrawn? Has not his scorn also been justified? Has not he also been tricked, duped? So, there comes a time when, like the guinea-pigs, he will have no more of these ancient falsities; a time when he doubts men's motives are as generous as they proclaim themselves; a time when he would withdraw from such mixed company. I wager there is no man of intelligence who has lived long and intimately with his fellows but has had his guinea-pig hours. As to myself, there are times when I can respect guinea-pigs for having nothing to do with us—when I have seen a man betray his trust and cloak the matter in virtue, or build up his own success out of the suffering of those he professed dear. Nor let me vaunt myself, neither; rather let me be frank and humble. Have I myself never been deserving of their scorn?
So, their silence, their persistent determination to have nothing to do with us, take on validity and meaning. It would seem that the farther we go, the better are we likely to understand their attitude. These are a people who do not indulge in back-biting, nor betray one another, nor perpetrate and countenance organized wrong. Their code is different. I begin to see how they could not forgive us our crudities, and would wish to have nothing to do with us.
Well, it is true, we are, we are a failful people. It cannot be denied. Not a one of us righteous, no not one. Isaiah and the prophets are right! Not a one who has not failed his brother. Not a one of us of mature judgment but knows that the larger part of friendship must still be forgiveness.
Yet, true though all this is, may not some word be said, after all, on our side of the matter? and even, perhaps, on this very point? Is there perhaps something too just in their estimate, and too little leeway for mercy? Their opinions—have they not some suggestion of that ancient Mosaic bargaining once fallaciously called justice? If we behaved ourselves more seemly, they would return us their favor. Yes; no doubt. But it sounds too much like an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It sounds as though they knew too little of the gentle dew that falls from Heaven.
Well, these are their beliefs and convictions; we can take them or leave them. Yes, precisely. I have known men, too, who would lay down a fixed code and stand against all affection on a principle. I am not sure but those of us with more faults find a better fate in a larger leniency. There are some of us who have learned to forgive as we would wish to be forgiven; some of us who have hid our faces in our hands, and that not through fear and a fixed resolve, but through love and a sudden overwhelming humility. There are faulty gentlenesses, I would have these little people witness and note. I could wish them to know they might be mistaken, and admit some behaviors in ourselves at least as good as their carrots. There are times I could pity them for not wanting to know something of our struggles, our failures, our follies, our pitiful falsities; when I could feel sorry for them, most of all, for having in their dealing with one another no occasion to feel sorry. Think of a people who, never having failed, could not forgive? Think of a whole race, and not a man among them whose friend had ever played him false! An entire species with no one to flatter and then betray them! Think of a polite and mutually courteous people, who never heard of, much less experienced, the unkindness of benefits forgot; who had no knowledge of the bitter taste of ingratitude, and who remained to the end indifferent to those triumphs of the spirit which are but dark-rooted failure brought to flower and fruit.
Granted that consistency is a jewel—are there not better things than jewels, especially if it be a man hungers and thirsts? Had they not better—and for the enlarging of their hearts—be mistaken? Yet, I have never heard that one of them ever said, "Am I right, am I wrong?" They persist stubbornly in their opinions. Their silence reiterates that we are not worthy, else they would have loved us!
Oh, away these petty measurements and shabby reasonings! Give me, instead, the splendor and accoutrements of a more illogical affection! Because love is withdrawn from me, shall I therefore withdraw mine in token of my wrong, and to balance the books, like an expert and chartered accountant? I have heard, rather, a wronged man declare "love is not love which alters where it alteration finds." Have I not cherished too long those greatest of all sonnets, made up entire of the splendor of failure and falseness and forgiveness, to accept any shoddy infallibility at a bargain price?
That day we believe that we have, stowed away in our little minds, the solution of the problem of existence, that day we refuse to forgive those who have wronged us, it were well for us to stop all argument and return to our hutches, to live content in the dark. What does any man know of the ample world who, like a guinea-pig, is content with life on so small a scale? What do they know of the vesture and trappings of poverty and danger and the worn out yet still splendid raiment of chance, who go so neatly clothed and content in certainty? The attitude of guinea-pigs, like that of too many men, smacks of the punitive. They would punish us, forsooth! Here would seem to be proof that they have no humor, and I doubt if they have ever heard, much less joined in the "inextinguishable laughter of the gods."
I would swear their literature, if you came to examine it, is a drear performance, and their drama one of stilted ethics and villains foredoomed. I think it must be they know nothing of the really great scenes. What would they make of Hamlet? Can it be thought they would tolerate Falstaff? Their Lear is writ, I would wager, to show what an absurd old man it was who made such a disposal of his property; and to point out how he got no more than his deserts; and how Cordelia was but fairly hanged by her better balanced sisters. And "ripeness is all"—is it likely they would ever have thought out or uttered that best piece of philosophy? Also, it is moderately certain there would be no fool in the piece whatever.
You see how the argument, with no intent of mine, turns like a hazel twig in the hand, to indicate these hidden waters. For I started out honestly and with sincerity to justify the stubborn silence of these little people and to show how it might be they were not so far wrong. I had the brilliant idea it was perhaps we, not they, who were stupid!
All things change. The entire universe is in flux. As for the man who can maintain the boast of a fixed belief, I can make nothing of him. Let him live in his barred safety, sleep in a hutch and feed upon his chosen carrots. We are sworn from our birth to the unbound, the unaccountable; and he who tries to stand fixed in a swirling universe, and who binds himself stubbornly to any fixed conviction, condemnation, creed, or behavior, has foregone his destiny; has set himself out of harmony with his stars, sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and allied himself with guinea-pigs.
There is no unchanging point in the universe, nor, if you could get off at a sufficient distance, any fixed stars, either. That man is not of most service to his fellows who is the most agreeable, and consistent with their humor; rather, it is he of a more contradictory ability; it is he who is daring—blundering if it must be—but he also who is the large, the unaccountable, the lovable.
We want to fix our affections on one thing, when life is already calling us to something better and increasing. While you declare your love of the blossom, the fruit is already setting, with far-off intent and purpose. All things mellow in the suns and winds of the days. The kernel hardens and the fruit swells and grows ripe. Our bigotry, too firmly held, becomes the starting-point of the next man's free thinking. A conviction that refuses to alter, in the end condemns and convicts itself.
And so we come back, step by step, to the larger matter of forgiveness; for to forgive is to progress, to understand, and in a sense to change and ripen one's opinion. All fruit drops from the tree green, unmatured, at last, that has the worm of self-love or hatred of others at the heart. It cannot be but Shakespeare's Edgar spoke true, for "Ripeness is all."
It is in the light of this that I would swerve once more, and venture to believe that guinea-pigs perhaps are stupid little things, after all, as the world has accredited them with being; and that when I beat upon their cage, in my turn rejecting them and their narrow-mindedness, I was profoundly right, however apparently wrong.
Yet, after all, I cannot be sure. Am I right or wrong? I do not know. It is a truism that we are all inclined to be prejudiced in our own favor, and affectionate and forgiving to ourselves, however severe we may believe it necessary to be upon others.
Have I been a little dogmatic myself, perhaps? Have I assumed I could search the heart of an entire people? I have denied them benevolence; yet they may have it—who knows?—under some other name. I have called them stupid and have thus denied them implicitly many qualities that may be secure enough, though well hid, in their possession. Let me yield at the most difficult point. I have said they lacked humor. It is one of my favorite tenets that the wise are forever, also, the gay, the debonair. It has been farthest from me, in all my observations of guinea-pigs, to suppose that they possess a single atom of gaiety. But, after all, now, who can tell? God knows! Perhaps! Peradventure—Perhaps it is not so unlikely or improbable that guinea-pigs have some gaiety of their own kind, after all; that at certain times agreed upon they meet in surreptitious conclave and scuttle through a Sir Roger, throw themselves hilariously into a horn-pipe, dance with positive élan "a Tucker-swing-the-ladies" or rattle through a Virginia reel in mere mad joy and celebration— Of what? Go to! I do not know am I right or wrong! Perhaps in celebration of the fact that they are guinea-pigs, and of the kindly fate that denied them tails to be picked up by.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1957, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 66 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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