speech. He called it “big thinks” to distinguish it from “little thinks,” the sane everyday interests of life. If ever I made a remark he did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to say it again, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a word wrong here or there, to all the milder of the beast people. He thought nothing of what was plain and comprehensible. I invented some very curious “big thinks” for his especial use. I think now that he was the silliest creature I ever met; he had developed in the most wonderful way the distinctive silliness of man without losing one jot of the natural folly of a monkey.
This, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude among these brutes. During that time they respected the usage established by the law, and behaved with general decorum. Once I found another rabbit torn to pieces—by the hyena-swine, I am assured—but that was all. It was about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference in their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation, a growing