Place yourself, Mr.Poke, for a single instant, in the situation of one of these persons; fancy that you had a hussar jacket squeezed upon your brawny shoulders, a petticoat placed over your lower extremities, a Spanish hat with bedraggled feathers set upon your head, a wooden sword stuck at your side, and a broom put into your hand; and that these two Savoyards were to menace you with stripes unless you consented to throw summersets for the amusement of strangers--I only ask you to make the case your own sir, and then say what course you would take and what you would do ?" "I would lick both of these young blackguards, Sir John, without remorse, break the sword and broom over their heads, kick their sensibilities till they couldn't see, and take my course for Stunin'tun, where I belong." "Yes, sir, this might do with the Savoyards, who are young and feeble--" "'Twouldn't alter the case much if two of these Frenchmen were in their places," put in the Captain, glaring wolfishly about him.

"To be plain with you, Sir John Goldencalf, being human, I'd submit to no such monkey tricks." "Do not use the term reproachfully, Mr.Poke, I entreat of you.

We call these animals monkeys, it is true; but we do not know what they call themselves.

Man is merely an animal, and you must very well know--" "Harkee, Sir John," interrupted the Captain, "I'm no botanist, and do not pretend to more schooling than a sealer has need of for finding his way about the 'arth; but as for a man's being an animal, I just wish to ask you, now, if in your judgment a hog is also an animal ?" "Beyond a doubt--and fleas, and toads, and sea-serpents, and lizards, and water-devils--we are all neither more nor less than animals." "Well, if a hog is an animal, I am willing to allow the relationship; for in the course of my experience, which is not small, I have met with men that you might have mistaken for hogs, in everything but the bristles, the snout, and the tail.

I'll never deny what I've seen with my own eyes, though I suffer for it; and therefore I admit that, hogs being animals, it is more than likely that some men must be animals too." "We call these interesting beings monkeys; but how do we know that they do not return the compliment, and call us, in their own particular dialect, something quite as offensive?
It would become our species to manifest a more equitable and philosophical spirit, and to consider these interesting strangers as an unfortunate family which has fallen into the hands of brutes, and which is in every way entitled to our commiseration and our active interference.