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Cornugaya Directory 01
Page 08
There is good testimony that various species of Gibbon readily take to
the erect posture. Mr. George Bennett, a very excellent observer, in
describing the habits of a male _Hylobates syndactylus_ which remained
for some time in his possession, says: "He invariably walks in the
erect posture when on a level surface; and then the arms either hang
down, enabling him to assist himself with his knuckles; or, what is
more usual, he keeps his arms uplifted in nearly an erect position,
with the hands pendent ready to seize a rope, and climb up on the
approach of danger or on the obtrusion of strangers. He walks rather
quick in the erect posture, but with a waddling gait, and is soon run
down if, while pursued, he has no opportunity of escaping by
climbing.... When he walks in the erect posture, he turns the leg and
foot outward, which occasions him to have a waddling gait and to seem
bow-legged."
Perhaps he married somebody's daughter. If a man would get hold of
the public ear, he must pay, marry, or fight. I have never
understood that AEschylus was a man of means, and the fighters do
not write poetry, so I suppose he must have married a theatrical
manager's daughter, and got his plays brought out that way. The ear
of any age or country is like its land, air, and water; it seems
limitless but is really limited, and is already in the keeping of
those who naturally enough will have no squatting on such valuable
property. It is written and talked up to as closely as the means of
subsistence are bred up to by a teeming population. There is not a
square inch of it but is in private hands, and he who would freehold
any part of it must do so by purchase, marriage, or fighting, in the
usual way--and fighting gives the longest, safest tenure. The
public itself has hardly more voice in the question who shall have
its ear, than the land has in choosing its owners. It is farmed as
those who own it think most profitable to themselves, and small
blame to them; nevertheless, it has a residuum of mulishness which
the land has not, and does sometimes dispossess its tenants. It is
in this residuum that those who fight place their hope and trust.
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