Thus they reached the lion-house.

There had been a morning fete at the Botanical Gardens, and a large

number of Forsy...'--that is, of well-dressed people who kept carriages

had brought them on to the Zoo, so as to have more, if possible, for

their money, before going back to Rutland Gate or Bryanston Square.

"Let's go on to the Zoo," they had said to each other; "it'll be great

fun!" It was a shilling day; and there would not be all those horrid

common people.

In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows, watching

the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their only pleasure

of the four-and-twenty hours. The hungrier the beast, the greater the

fascination. But whether because the spectators envied his appetite,

or, more humanely, because it was so soon to be satisfied, young

Jolyon could not tell. Remarks kept falling on his ears: "That's a

nasty-looking brute, that tiger!" "Oh, what a love! Look at his little

mouth!" "Yes, he's rather nice! Don't go too near, mother."

And frequently, with little pats, one or another would clap their hands

to their pockets behind and look round, as though expecting young Jolyon

or some disinterested-looking person to relieve them of the contents.

A well-fed man in a white waistcoat said slowly through his teeth: "It's

all greed; they can't be hungry. Why, they take no exercise." At these

words a tiger snatched a piece of bleeding liver, and the fat man

laughed. His wife, in a Paris model frock and gold nose-nippers,

reproved him: "How can you laugh, Harry? Such a horrid sight!"

Young Jolyon frowned.

The circumstances of his life, though he had ceased to take a too

personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent contempt;

and the class to which he had belonged--the carriage class--especially

excited his sarcasm.

To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible

barbarity. But no cultivated person would admit this.

The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had probably

never even occurred to his father for instance; he belonged to the old

school, who considered it at once humanizing and educational to confine

baboons and panthers, holding the view, no doubt, that in course of time

they might induce these creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery

and heart-sickness against the bars of their cages, and put the society

to the expense of getting others! In his eyes, as in the eyes of all

Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state

of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts

whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for

the animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of

open air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their functions

in the guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment! Indeed, it was

doubtful what wild animals were made for but to be shut up in cages!




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