IV. The Animal Acrobat and Clown
Can you think of anything that will collect a crowd of children so quickly, or keep them happy so long as an organ grinder with a monkey?
The music is often very dreadful, but the monkey is very funny. His tiny wrinkled face is so comical. It looks like that of a wise little old man who has seen a lot of trouble. Like a good clown in a circus, a monkey doesn't have to do anything to make people laugh—except just be a monkey. He is so wonderfully agile, quick and clever. He mimics everything people do. He "makes faces," he dances to music; he runs up the telegraph pole, a tree or a porch pillar, and he swings from bars like a trapeze performer. He picks up pennies, stuffs them in the pocket of his absurd red jacket, and pulls off his collar-box cap for thanks.
It seems a pity that a monkey can only chatter or scream or scold, for he tries ever so hard to talk. Such a mischief he is, too. If he sees a chance he will snatch a little girl's doll or a lady's hat and tear them in pieces. He knows very well such behavior is naughty, for he scrambles out of reach of punishment, and chuckles with glee over the trick. It's easy to forgive the little rascal, for the next instant he does something engaging. He cuddles his baby, or cracks a peanut like a squirrel, turns a hand-spring for you, or slyly pulls another monkey's tail.
Just what is a monkey?
In the big cage in a menagerie or zoo, there are a dozen or more varieties of monkeys as unlike each other as a fox terrier is unlike a St. Bernard dog. Some monkeys are as small as chipmunks, and others are as large as cocker spaniels. There are monkeys with long curly tails, with straight tails, bushy tails, stub tails, and no tails at all. Some have very hairy, and others nearly naked faces. There are dog-faced and purple-faced monkeys; monkeys with white cheeks, with turned-up noses, with tufted ears, with whiskers, mufflers and bonnets. Most of them are black, gray or some shade of brown, from silver-fawn to seal. But there are dandified monkeys with green coats and orange vests.
Many people call all the big apes—the gorillas, chimpanzees, orang-ootans, baboons and gibbons, monkeys. But we won't do
