The Pilgrim Sees Animals and Famous People
I SHOULD be ashamed if I had not been in the Zoo and Kew Gardens, for you are to know everything. So I saw the elephants bathing and the leopards warming their supple bellies in the evening sun; I took a peep at the terrible mouth of the hippopotamus, like gigantic ox-lungs; I looked at the giraffes, which smile in a delicate and reserved manner like elderly spinsters; I watched the lion asleep, the monkeys embracing, and the orang-outang putting a basket on his head as we human beings don a hat; the Indian peacock opened its tail for me and turned itself about, scraping challengingly with its claw; the fish in the aquarium shimmered in all the colours of the rainbow; and the rhinoceros seemed to
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