Chapter 10

A GREAT DEAL OF NEGOTIATION, IN WHICH HUMAN SHREWDNESS IS COMPLETELY
SHAMED, AND HUMAN INGENUITY IS SHOWN TO BE OF A VERY SECONDARY
QUALITY.

Mr. Poke listened to my account of all that had passed, with a very
sedate gravity. He informed me that he had witnessed so much
ingenuity among the seals, and had known so many brutes that seemed
to have the sagacity of men, and so many men who appeared to have
the stupidity of brutes, that he had no difficulty whatever in
believing every word I told him. He expressed his satisfaction, too,
at the prospect of hearing a lecture on natural philosophy and
political economy from the lips of a monkey; although he took
occasion to intimate that no desire to learn anything lay at the
bottom of his compliance; for, in his country, these matters were
pretty generally studied in the district schools, the very children
who ran about the streets of 'Stunin'tun' usually knowing more than
most of the old people in foreign parts. Still a monkey might have
some new ideas; and for his part, he was willing to hear what every
one had to say; for, if a man didn't put in a word for himself in
this world, he might be certain no one else would take the pains to
speak for him. But when I came to mention the details of the
programme of the forthcoming interview, and stated that it was
expected the audience would wear their own skins, out of respect to
the ladies, I greatly feared that my friend would have so far
excited himself as to go into fits. The rough old sealer swore some
terrible oaths, protesting "that he would not make a monkey of
himself, by appearing in this garb, for all the monikin
philosophers, or high-born females, that could be stowed in a ship's
hold; that he was very liable to take cold; that he once knew a man
who undertook to play beast in this manner, and the first thing the
poor devil knew, he had great claws and a tail sprouting out of him;
a circumstance that he had always attributed to a just judgment for
striving to make himself more than Providence had intended him for;
that, provided a man's ears were naked, he could hear just as well
as if his whole body was naked; that he did not complain of the
monkeys going in their skins, and that they ought, in reason, not to
meddle with his clothes; that he should be scratching himself the
whole time, and thinking what a miserable figure he cut; that he
would have no place to keep his tobacco; that he was apt to be deaf
when he was cold; that he would be d----d if he did any such thing;
that human natur' and monkey natur' were not the same, and it was
not to be expected that men and monkeys should follow exactly the
same fashions; that the meeting would have the appearance of a
boxing match, instead of a