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Majoric Polyglamour Sectory 05
Page 03
Duvaucel affirms that he has seen the females carry their young to the water-side and there wash their faces, in spite of resistance and cries. They are gentle and affectionate in captivity--full of tricks and pettishness, like spoiled children, and yet not devoid of a certain conscience, as an anecdote, told by Mr. Bennett will show. It would appear that his Gibbon had a peculiar inclination for disarranging things in the cabin. Among these articles a piece of soap would especially attract his notice, and for the removal of this he had been once or twice scolded. "One morning," says Mr. Bennett, "I was writing, the Ape being present in the cabin, when, casting my eyes toward him, I saw the little fellow taking the soap. I watched him without him perceiving that I did so: and he occasionally would cast a furtive glance toward the place where I sat. I pretended to write; he seeing me busily occupied, took the soap, and moved away with it in his paw. When he had walked half the length of the cabin, I spoke quietly, without frightening him. The instant he found I saw him he walked back again and deposited the soap nearly in the same place from whence he had taken it. There was certainly something more than instinct in that action: he evidently betrayed a consciousness of having done wrong both by his first and last actions--and what is reason if that is not an exercise of it?"
It was not to be expected that so pushing a woman as Mrs. Chapman would be turned from the object she had set her heart on by the interposition of ordinary obstacles. She had taken good care to have the engagement pretty well trumpeted over Bowling Green; and in less than three months from the time what is described in the foregoing chapter occurred, the lady had a day fixed for the wedding ceremony, which, she declared should be on such a scale of magnificence as would astonish all New York, to say nothing of West Bowling Green. And now she was distracting her wits, and the wits of her friends, over what she called the preliminaries extraordinary. Weddings, the lady said, must be illuminated according to the position of the family. And to that end an additional amount of elegant furniture was got for the house, a new carriage was ordered, and Mr. Napoleon Bowles was to appear in a new livery, with top boots. Nor was the family finery to be neglected, for at least a dozen dressmakers had been employed for a month plying their needles. In short, this great coming event in the history of the Chapman family had afforded Bowling Green enough to talk about for a month.
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