the Belgians, had
to leave Africa for theft.

That Mr. Guggenheim wishes and intends to give to the black in the
Congo fair treatment there is no possible doubt. But that on
Broadway, removed from the scene of operations in time some four to
six months, and in actual distance eight thousand miles, he can
control the acts of his agents and his partners, remains to be
proved. He is attacking a problem much more momentous than the
handling of Mexican _peons_ or Chinese coolies, and every step of
the working out of this problem will be watched by the people of
this country.

And should they find that the example of the Belgian concessionaires
in their treatment of the natives is being imitated by even one of
the American Congo Company the people of this country will know it,
and may the Lord have mercy on his soul!

V

HUNTING THE HIPPO

Except once or twice in the Zoo, I never had seen a hippopotamus,
and I was most anxious, before I left the Congo, to meet one. I
wanted to look at him when he was free, and his own master, without
iron bars or keepers; when he believed he was quite alone, and was
enjoying his bath in peace and confidence. I also wanted to shoot
him, and to hang in my ancestral halls his enormous head with the
great jaws open and the inside of them painted pink and the small
tusks hungrily protruding. I had this desire, in spite of the fact
that for every hippo except the particular one whose head I coveted,
I entertained the utmost good feeling.

As a lad, among other beasts the hippopotamus had appealed to my
imagination. Collectively, I had always looked upon them as most
charming people. They come of an ancient family. Two thousand four
hundred years ago they were mentioned by Herodotus. And Herodotus to
the animal kingdom is what Domesday Book is to the landed gentry. To
exist beautifully for twenty-four hundred years without a single
mesalliance, without having once stooped to trade, is certainly a
strong title to nobility. Other animals by contact with man have
become degraded. The lion, the "King of Beasts," now rides a
bicycle, and growls, as previously rehearsed, at the young woman in
spangles, of whom he is secretly afraid. And the elephant, the
monarch of the jungle, and of a family as ancient and noble as that
of the hippopotamus, the monarch of the river, has become a beast of
burden and works for his living. You can see him in Phoenix Park
dragging a road-roller, in Siam an