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Toys of Peace-Part17_H.H.Munro(Saki)(1870-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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rival or two to make matters interesting. Of course there ought to



be jungle-cats and birds of prey and other agencies of sudden death

to add to the illusion of liberty, but the bird's own imagination is



capable of inventing those--look how a domestic fowl will squawk an

alarm note if a rook or wood pigeon passes over its run when it has



chickens."

"You think, then, they really do have a sort of illusion, if you



give them space enough--"

"In a few cases only. Nothing will make me believe that an acre or



so of concreteenclosure will make up to a wolf or a tiger-cat for

the range of night prowling that would belong to it in a wild state.



Think of the dictionary of sound and scent and recollection that

unfolds before a real wild beat as it comes out from its lair every



evening, with the knowledge that in a few minutes it will be hieing

along to some distant hunting ground where all the joy and fury of



the chase awaits it; think of the crowdedsensations of the brain

when every rustle, every cry, every bent twig, and every whiff



across the nostrils means something, something to do with life and

death and dinner. Imagine the satisfaction of stealing down to your



own particular drinking spot, choosing your own particular tree to

scrape your claws on, finding your own particular bed of dried grass



to roll on. Then, in the place of all that, put a concrete

promenade, which will be of exactly the same dimensions whether you



race or crawl across it, coated with stale, unvarying scents and

surrounded with cries and noises that have ceased to have the least



meaning or interest. As a substitute for a narrow cage the new

enclosures are excellent, but I should think they are a poor



imitation of a life of liberty."

"It's rather depressing to think that," said Mrs. Gurtleberry; "they



look so spacious and so natural, but I suppose a good deal of what

seems natural to us would be meaningless to a wild animal."



"That is where our superior powers of self-deception come in," said

the niece; "we are able to live our unreal, stupid little lives on



our particular Mappin terrace, and persuade ourselves that we really

are untrammelled men and women leading a reasonableexistence in a



reasonable sphere."

"But good gracious," exclaimed the aunt, bouncing into an attitude



of scandalised defence, "we are leading reasonableexistences! What

on earth do you mean by trammels? We are merely trammelled by the



ordinary decent conventions of civilised society."

"We are trammelled," said the niece, calmly and pitilessly, "by



restrictions of income and opportunity, and above all by lack of

initiative. To some people a restricted income doesn't matter a



bit, in fact it often seems to help as a means for getting a lot of

reality out of life; I am sure there are men and women who do their



shopping in little back streets of Paris, buying four carrots and a

shred of beef for their daily sustenance, who lead a perfectly real



and eventful existence. Lack of initiative is the thing that really

cripples one, and that is where you and I and Uncle James are so



hopelessly shut in. We are just so many animals stuck down on a

Mappin terrace, with this difference in our disfavour, that the



animals are there to be looked at, while nobody wants to look at us.

As a matter of fact there would be nothing to look at. We get colds



in winter and hay fever in summer, and if a wasp happens to sting

one of us, well, that is the wasp's initiative, not ours; all we do



is to wait for the swelling to go down. Whenever we do climb into

local fame and notice, it is by indirect methods; if it happens to



be a good flowering year for magnolias the neighbourhood observes:

'Have you seen the Gurtleberry's magnolia? It is a perfect mass of



flowers,' and we go about telling people that there are fifty-seven

blossoms as against thirty-nine the previous year."



"In Coronation year there were as many as sixty," put in the aunt,

"your uncle has kept a record for the last eight years."



"Doesn't it ever strike you," continued the niece relentlessly,

"that if we moved away from here or were blotted out of existence



our local claim to fame would pass on automatically to whoever

happened to take the house and garden? People would say to one






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