'll believe all Darwin said on the subject, but as the thing stands
I've nothing but Darwin's word to prove that men and monkeys are near
relations. So far as I can learn, Darwin didn't know as much about
animals as a man ought to know who undertakes to invent a theory about
them. He never was intimate with dogs, and he never drove an army mule.
He had a sort of bowing acquaintance with monkeys and a few other
animals of no particular standing in the community, but he couldn't even
understand a single animal language. Now, if he had gone to work, and
learned to read and write, and speak the monkey language, as that
American professor that you were just speaking of has done, he might
have been able to give us some really valuable information.

"Do I believe that animals talk? I don't simply believe it, I know it.
When I was a young man I had a good deal to do with animals, and I
learned to understand the cat language just as well as I understood
English. It's an easy language when once you get the hang of it, and
from what I hear of German the two are considerably alike. You look as
if you didn't altogether believe me, though why you should doubt that a
man can learn cat language when the world is full of men that pretend to
have learned German, and nobody calls their word in question, I don't
precisely see.

"Of course, I don't pretend to understand all the cat dialects. For
example, I don't know a word of the Angora dialect, and can only
understand a sentence here and there of the tortoiseshell dialect, but
so far as good, pure standard cat language goes, it's as plain as print
to me to-day, though I haven't paid any attention to it for forty years.
I don't want you to understand that I ever spoke it. I always spoke
English when I was talking with cats. They all understand English as
well as you do. They pick it up just as a child picks up a language from
hearing it spoken.

"Forty years ago I was a young man, and, like most young men, I fancied
that I was in love with a young woman of our town. There isn't the least
doubt in my mind that I should have married her if I had not known the
cat language. She afterwards married a man whom she took away to Africa
with her as a missionary. I knew him well, and he didn't want to go to
Africa. Said he had no call to be a missionary, and that all he wanted
was to live in a Christian country where he could go and talk with the
boys in the bar-room evenings. But his wife carried