ed us can talk?'

"'Surely,' said I, 'have you not noticed that some talk with the lips
only, some with the whole face, and yet others discourse with the hands?
When they come quite close to the glass you can hear them. Listen!'

"At that moment a female, larger than the rest, pressed her nose up
against the glass, pointed at me and said to her young behind her, 'Oh,
look, here's a queer one!'

"And then we noticed that they nearly always said this when they looked
in. And for a long time we thought that such was the whole extent of the
language, this being a people of but few ideas. To help pass away the
weary hours we learned it by heart, 'Oh, look, here's a queer one!' But
we never got to know what it meant. Other phrases, however, we did get
the meaning of; and we even learned to read a little in man-talk. Many
big signs there were, set up upon the walls; and when we saw that the
keepers stopped the people from spitting and smoking, pointed to these
signs angrily and read them out loud, we knew then that these writings
signified, 'No Smoking and Don't Spit.' Then in the evenings, after the
crowd had gone, the same aged male with one leg of wood, swept up the
peanut-shells with a broom every night. And while he was so doing he
always whistled the same tune to himself. This melody we rather liked;
and we learned that too by heart--thinking it was part of the language.

"Thus a whole year went by in this dismal place. Some days new fishes
were brought in to the other tanks; and other days old fishes were taken
out. At first we had hoped we would only be kept here for a while, and
that after we had been looked at sufficiently we would be returned to
freedom and the sea. But as month after month went by, and we were left
undisturbed, our hearts grew heavy within our prison-walls of glass and
we spoke to one another less and less.

"One day, when the crowd was thickest in the big room, a woman with a
red face fainted from the heat. I watched through the glass and saw that
the rest of the people got highly excited--though to me it did not seem
to be a matter of very great importance. They threw cold water on her
and carried her out into the open air.

"This made me think mightily; and presently a great idea burst upon me.

"'Sister,' I said, turning to poor Clippa who was sulking at the bottom
of our prison trying to hide behind a stone from the stupid gaze of the
children who thronged about our tank, 'supposing that