Donkey

“ Donkeys, mules, on they come, great pannier baskets making a rhythm under the perched woman, great bundles bouncing against the sides of the slim-footed animals. A baby donkey trotting naked after its piled-up dam, a white, sandal-footed man following with the silent Indian haste, and a girl running again on light feet. ”

“ The sights and sounds, the ragged and bronzed beggar urchins, the hawkers of lemons and water, the strings of donkeys and mules in fringed blinkers pattering along under huge net or straw panniers, crammed with fruit, or charcoal, or tiles, or cork-wood—how characteristic, how utterly un-Frankish! That lolling clown, with legs dangling over the tawny sheared sides of a diminutive donkey, is a study in himself. ”

“ The narrow streets swarmed like a hive with men and women in strange Oriental costumes, and our small donkeys knocked them right and left as we plowed through them, urged on by the merciless donkey-boys. These persecutors run after the animals, shouting and goading them for hours together; they keep the donkey in a gallop always, yet never get tired themselves or fall behind. ”

“ Up the driveway the tiny, thin donkey bore the cart, rattling a song of triumph, with the bareheaded girl and the big huddled officer crouched in it, helpless—straight into the midst of the function. About the stately lawn stood groups of women in gay gowns; and the great men of the land, and the gilded youth, in and out of uniform, waited upon their words. ”

“ I suggested they put him on a donkey, with his face tail-wards, and as a dead vulture had been brought to me, from under one of the trees, that the skin of this stinking bird should be put on the sweeper as a headdress. He was soon in position, with his regalia upon him, and the donkey was led up and down the streets for an hour, while the crowd, including many from the other villages, for the report of the coming fun soon spread, made all possible sport with their victim, while the boys pelted the sinner with bits of earth and rotten vegetables. ”

“ The donkey drivers, clothed in short blue and white tunics, bare-armed and bare-legged, their heads covered with a fez, a wand in their hand, and resembling the slender figures of shepherds or youths which are so exquisitely drawn on the bodies of Greek vases, stood near their animals in an indolent attitude, which they abandoned as soon as a chance customer came their way. ”

“ Their leader is usually a dirty, unkempt, diminutive donkey—in marked contrast to the stately animals that submissively follow him—which is frequently bestridden by a somnolent Turk wearing a faded old fez and voluminous red trousers, with his legs reaching almost to the ground. As the caravan gradually approaches one hears the jingling of the bells of the light-stepping donkey and the clanging of the larger bells of the heavy, lurching camel. ”

“ Behold! the cutest little donkey I ever saw. He was a sleek, slender creature of blush color, with an intelligent but roguish countenance, and with cropped ears which gave him a semblance to a deer. The doctor said the animal was hardly three years old. His hoofs were very small, so tiny that he might have stepped into an after-dinner cup and not damaged more than your appetite for coffee.
"What do you call the little fellow?" I asked.
"Mac A'Rony," said the doctor. ”

“ The donkey is abused, whacked, beaten till he is raw, saddled so that all the straps gall him, hard-ridden, left for hours to be assailed by the flies in the street, and ridiculed by all men. I wish we could know what sort of an animal centuries of good treatment would have made of him. Something no doubt quite beyond human deserts; as it is, he is simply indispensable in Eastern life. ”

“ Cows and horses are occasionally seen, but they do not strike one as native to the place as the donkey does. He is a sort of link between the homestead and the wilderness. The donkey is man's poor, patient, anciently-broken creature, but when he roams abroad in quest of that tough and juiceless fodder on the desolate heath and hillsides—a food thought good enough for the likes of him, or the likes of he, as his master would say—he fits into the scene as the cow and horse certainly do not. ”

“ There was but one turn now between them; the rat took it.
Peace, with his hand on the machine, stopped and looked back, and at that, with one accord, donkey and cart and bicycle and man sped at each other. In an ornate zigzag with fancy steps they sped as if planning the dance from the foundation of the world. No one can dodge a shying donkey successfully unless it is known which way the donkey shies next. ”

“ The good donkey is easy as a rocking-chair, sure-footed as a chamois; he can thread any crowd and stand patiently dozing in any noisy thoroughfare for hours. To ride him is only a slight compromise of one's independence in walking. ”

“ The little donkey went over the road through the hills on the way back with spirit, for donkeys are good homers. Denis Donohoe sat up on the front of the cart, his legs dangling down beside the shaft. The donkey trotted down the slopes gayly, the harness rattling, the cart swaying, jolting, making an amazing noise. ”

“ He half-smothers a small donkey with a ring of jingling bells round its neck, a coolie follows him in rags, but that does not matter, spring is in the land, and he is nearly hidden by the lilac bloom he carries, another comes along with a basket strapped on his back and a scoop in his hand, he is collecting the droppings of the animals, either for manure or to make argol for fuel, a stream of rickshaws swerve out of the way of a blind man, ragged, bent, old, who with lute in one hand and staff in the other taps his way along. ”

“ To turn for a moment to less serious matters. I never shall see a donkey without gratefully thinking of a Prussian. If anyone happens to fall out with his jackass, let me recommend him, instead of beating it, to slay and eat it. Donkey is now all the fashion. When one is asked to dinner, as an inducement one is told that there will be donkey. The flesh of this obstinate, but weak-minded quadruped is delicious—in colour like mutton, firm and savoury. This siege will destroy many illusions, and amongst them the prejudice which has prevented many animals being used as food. ”

“ Almost every group, in addition, had a well-laden donkey—comical little creatures, looking hardly bigger under their huge hampers than well-sized Newfoundland dogs, and hurrying nimbly along, with a speed that betokened a wholesome remembrance of a good many hard thrashings in the past and a reasonable dread of similar ones in the future. If I held the doctrine of transmigration, I should be firmly persuaded that the souls of parish beadles, drunken captains, and other petty tyrants, shifted quarters into the bodies of Jamaica negroes' donkeys. ”

“ A squad of volunteers from among the hotel guests, armed to the teeth and carrying lanterns, were kind enough to go with me donkey hunting, but nothing more than a few ominous traces of Mac's stubborn resistance did we discover. A tuft of donkey hair and a gory human tooth were picked off the barn floor, and also, just outside, a section of the seat of a man's trousers, all of which indicates that the donkey is the unwilling prisoner of a band of wags. ”

“ The Donkey and his Mistress.
Donkeys are capable of great affection for those who treat them well.
An old woman, known to Mrs F—, had a donkey which usually grazed on the roadside near her cottage, and when he saw any person about to enter her abode would instantly run to the door and defend it against all intrusion till the dame herself appeared. If any one annoyed the old woman—as the boys around would sometimes do, for the sake of seeing how the donkey would behave—he would kick out at them fiercely, put them to the rout, and pursue them for some distance. ”

“ THE DONKEY AND HIS MASTERS
"How I hate this early rising!" said a donkey, with a great yawn. "I wish I might sleep till sunrise. Here I am, harnessed and ready to start to town before the roosters crow. And why? To take a little fruit and a few vegetables to market. Isn't that a foolish reason for spoiling my dreams!"
The master was tired of his donkey, for he never seemed willing to do his work. "I do hate a donkey with his ears turned backward," he said. "He has no right to complain, for his work is really light, and he gets plenty of food and rest."
One day a tanner came along. ”

“ Our old folks allus travelled with pack-donkeys, and they had one donkey as was a wery knowing animal. I’ll tell you one thing it did. We was stopping in a lane of a summer’s evening, and our foki (people) was smoking afore the fire under a hedge with the children playing round, and everybody was as happy as the Lord in Heaven, but all at once our maila (donkey) comes and pokes its head atween daddy and me, and I taps it on the nose, playful-like, to send it away, but it comes back, and it was that restless and fidgety, poking and pulling at us—it wouldn’t be druv off. ”

“ On recovering the trap, we found it sprinkled with donkey hair, and sheep twine, which was proof enough that some young villain had fastened a cage full of rats to Mac A'Rony's tail, he being the most amiable of the donkeys. There is nothing like the mysterious to frighten a dumb brute, and when that donkey heard strange noises and felt mysterious movements about his hind legs, he didn't wait for an explanation. ”

“ The bridge approach on each side of the river crosses a broad stretch of lowlands which at certain seasons is inundated. My donkeys refused to pass the toll-gate, although I had paid the toll. I demanded of Mac an explanation. He maintained silence, as did Cheese, and neither of them would budge. A squad of laborers, amused at my plight, asserted their donkey nature by imitating an ass's bray, and so perfect was the imitation that my animals took them for donkeys disguised in human apparel, and joined in the awful chorus. ”

“ But the donkey dragged no cart after him. He was carrying on his back on a small pack-saddle{316} the torso of a man who did not seem to have any legs. The little animal, beautifully groomed and with an intelligent and even impudent physiognomy, stopped in front of Monsieur and Madame Réal. The man, balancing himself cleverly on the pack-saddle with his withered legs crossed in front of him, slipped off, disengaged his crutches from each side of the donkey smartly, propped himself on them, and with his open palm gave the animal a resounding thwack which sent it trotting into the yard. ”

“ The donkey is very robust. In proportion to its size it is perhaps of all animals the one that can carry the heaviest load, but as its body is small the [382] burden placed on it ought not to exceed moderate limits. What a useful servant would one not have in an animal having the qualities of the donkey and the vigorous development of the horse! Such a creature does not exist in the natural order, but man has obtained it by the intervention of his art.
“The species of the horse and that of the ass are unmistakably distinct from each other and never cross in the wild state. ”

“ They were sitting thus one June evening, when Jans laid aside his pipe, and said, in his usual deliberate way:
“I think I’ll buy a horse, or a donkey, or a dog-cart, or something, to take all these cabbages to market.”
“Buy a donkey by all means,” said mein herr, [95] “for a donkey, that is an ass, is classical. They are famous in sacred as well as in profane literature. No animal has always been so much the companion of man as the donkey, no one more valuable. ”

“ The few people we did meet always appeared at inconvenient moments. A fat young lady riding a very small donkey with very wide jamugas, and carrying a beautiful flounced silk parasol, suddenly came into the picture half-way down a precipitous hill, so steep and so strewn with boulders that I, feeling discretion to be the better part of valour, had got off my donkey to walk. ”

“ The more readily the donkey breathes, the more capable he is to carry heavy burdens long distances. Logical,{176} this! And the procedure, too, improves the tonal quality of the donkey’s bray. Well, perhaps, though most of us are not devotees of that sort of music. Compared to Italy or Spain, there are considerably fewer suffering sore-backed donkeys in Algeria or Tunisia.
There is no question but that for economical service the donkey will kill any horse or mule; and it is clear that, weight for weight and load for load, he daily outdoes the camel. ”

“ The donkey is quite a feature of this country as he is apt to be of all mountain countries in fact. I have never associated with a more genial urbane or refined donkey than we have here. He is generally a soft mouse color, about nine hands high, and delights in making small, elongated foot-prints on the sands of time. ”

“ Nodding Donkey, if you are afraid!" called the Elephant through his trunk. He was the largest animal in the Noah's Ark, but even he was not as big as the Donkey. As for that nodding toy, he reared back on his hind legs when he saw the strange animal, covered with fur and with the big tail like a dustbrush, jump on the table. The [Pg 73] toy animals could move and talk among themselves now, as long as no human being was in the room.
The furry animal stood on the table in the midst of the toys. ”

“ Each donkey has his driver or attendant, without whose presence, behind or at the side, the animal ceases to go forward. These boys, and some of them are men in stature, are the quickest-witted, most importunate, good-natured vagabonds in this world. They make a study of human nature, and accurately measure every traveler the moment he appears. They are agile to do errands, some of them are better guides than the professionals, they can be entrusted with any purchases you may make, they run, carrying their slippers in their hand, all day beside the donkey, and get only a pittance of pay. ”