Laura Spencer Portor

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 Because love is withdrawn from me, shall I therefore withdraw mine in token of my wrong, and to balance the books, like an expert and chartered accountant?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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”