Identifier: herselfireland01ocon (find matches)
Title: Herself--Ireland
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: O'Connor, T. P., Mrs., d. 1931
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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their talent, and they were obliged to wait theconvenience of each other. Two instrumentswould enable them to perform duets. I suppliedthe deficiency with a fine large, resonant, redJapanese mouth-organ, which Mr. Percy La-bouchere found for me in Cork. On the day ofpresentation, when I offered it to the large ele-phant, he gave it a great blast, which soundedquite a Wagnerian chord; then quickly transferredhis attention to me, to see if I had concealed anyapples about my wearing apparel. Since thatday there have been many rehearsals, and now theelephants are adepts in duets. All animals can be taught tricks; a member ofmy family owns a guinea-pig who sings. Hisvoice has not the full volume nor the thrillingquality of Carusos, but when his mistress says, Sing, Squeezel, he pipes a fairy rondeau tocarrots, and swells to twice his normal size at theapplause which follows. Sir John Lubbockclaimed to have a dog who could talk, and Lucianmade his animals in conversation both wise andwitty.
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-1 f= 3 K A PERFORMING ZOO 183 Tell me, says Micyllus to the Cock, whenyou were a dog, a horse, or a fish, or a frog, howdid you like that life? Every one of these lives is much more quietthan that of man, as the hfe of animals is withinthe bounds of natural desires and needs: for amongthem you could never see a usurious horse, or abackbiting frog, a sophisticated jay, a gormetgnat, or a deceitful cock. I will allow that a frogs face does not suggestbackbiting proclivities, it is too broad and genial;and a horse is too honest for usury, but jay birds—at least American jay birds—are gay birds, andare more than sophisticated, for: De jay bird he loped wid de blue bird wife,An it almost took dat blue bird life. And gormet gnats—I bear their scars still—arecertainly to be found during the summer monthsin Ireland; and Ive often seen a calculating anddeceitful cock, head held high, staring absent-mindedly away from a worm, and when the atten-tion of all the hens was distracted, he w

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