There is one puzzling thing
about these prehistoric memories
of mine. It is the vagueness
of the time element. I lo not
always know the order of events;--or
can I tell, between some events,
whether one, two, or four or
five years have elapsed. I can
only roughly tell the passage
of time by judging the changes
in the appearance and pursuits
of my fellows.
Also, I can apply the logic
of events to the various happenings.
For instance, there is no doubt
whatever that my mother and I
were treed by the wild pigs and
fled and fell in the days before
I made the acquaintance of Lop-Ear,
who became what I may call my
boyhood chum. And it is just
as conclusive that between these
two periods I must have left
my mother.
I have no memory of my father
than the one I have given. Never,
in the years that followed, did
he reappear. And from my knowledge
of the times, the only explanation
possible lies in that he perished
shortly after the adventure with
the wild pigs. That it must have
been an untimely end, there is
no discussion. He was in full
vigor, and only sudden and violent
death could have taken him off.
But I know not the manner of
his going--whether he was drowned
in the river, or was swallowed
by a snake, or went into the
stomach of old Saber-Tooth, the
tiger, is beyond my knowledge.
For know that I remember only
the things I saw myself, with
my own eyes, in those prehistoric
days. If my mother knew my father's
end, she never told me. For that
matter I doubt if she had a vocabulary
adequate to convey such information.
Perhaps, all told, the Folk in
that day had a vocabulary of
thirty or forty sounds.
I call them SOUNDS, rather
than WORDS, because sounds they
were primarily. They had no fixed
values, to be altered by adjectives
and adverbs. These latter were
tools of speech not yet invented.
Instead of qualifying nouns or
verbs by the use of adjectives
and adverbs, we qualified sounds
by intonation, by changes in
quantity and pitch, by retarding
and by accelerating. The length
of time employed in the utterance
of a particular sound shaded
its meaning.
We had no conjugation. One
judged the tense by the context.
We talked only concrete things
because we thought only concrete
things. Also, we depended largely
on pantomime. The simplest abstraction
was practically beyond our thinking;
and when one did happen to think
one, he was hard put to communicate
it to his fellows. There were
no sounds for it. He was pressing
beyond the limits of his vocabulary.
If he invented sounds for it,
his fellows did not understand
the sounds. Then it was that
he fell back on pantomime, illustrating
the thought wherever possible
and at the same time repeating
the new sound over and over again.
Thus language grew. By the
few sounds we possessed we were
enabled to think a short distance
beyond those sounds; then came
the need for new sounds wherewith
to express the new thought. Sometimes,
however, we thought too long
a distance in advance of our
sounds, managed to achieve abstractions
(dim ones I grant), which we
failed utterly to make known
to other folk. After all, language
did not grow fast in that day.
Oh, believe me, we were amazingly
simple. But we did know a lot
that is not known to-day. We
could twitch our ears, prick
them up and flatten them down
at will. And we could scratch
between our shoulders with ease.
We could throw stones with our
feet. I have done it many a time.
And for that matter, I could
keep my knees straight, bend
forward from the hips, and touch,
not the tips of my fingers, but
the points of my elbows, to the
ground. And as for bird-nesting--well,
I only wish the twentieth-century
boy could see us. But we made
no collections of eggs. We ate
them.
I remember--but I out-run my
story. First let me tell of Lop-Ear
and our friendship. Very early
in my life, I separated from
my mother. Possibly this was
because, after the death of my
father, she took to herself a
second husband. I have few recollections
of him, and they are not of the
best. He was a light fellow.
There was no solidity to him.
He was too voluble. His infernal
chattering worries me even now
as I think of it. His mind was
too inconsequential to permit
him to possess purpose. Monkeys
in their cages always remind
me of him. He was monkeyish.
That is the best description
I can give of him.
He hated me
from the first. And I quickly
learned to be afraid
of him and his malicious pranks.
Whenever he came in sight I crept
close to my mother and clung
to her. But I was growing older
all the time, and it was inevitable
that I should from time to time
stray from her, and stray farther
and farther. And these were the
opportunities that the Chatterer
waited for. (I may as well explain
that we bore no names in those
days; were not known by any name.
For the sake of convenience I
have myself given names to the
various Folk I was more closely
in contact with, and the "Chatterer" is
the most fitting description
I can find for that precious
stepfather of mine. As for me,
I have named myself "Big-Tooth." My
eye-teeth were pronouncedly large.)
But to return to the Chatterer.
He persistently terrorized me.
He was always pinching me and
cuffing me, and on occasion he
was not above biting me. Often
my mother interfered, and the
way she made his fur fly was
a joy to see. But the result
of all this was a beautiful and
unending family quarrel, in which
I was the bone of contention.
No, my home-life was not happy.
I smile to myself as I write
the phrase. Home-life! Home!
I had no home in the modern sense
of the term. My home was an association,
not a habitation. I lived in
my mother's care, not in a house.
And my mother lived anywhere,
so long as when night came she
was above the ground.
My mother was old-fashioned.
She still clung to her trees.
It is true, the more progressive
members of our horde lived in
the caves above the river. But
my mother was suspicious and
unprogressive. The trees were
good enough for her. Of course,
we had one particular tree in
which we usually roosted, though
we often roosted in other trees
when nightfall caught us. In
a convenient fork was a sort
of rude platform of twigs and
branches and creeping things.
It was more like a huge bird-nest
than anything else, though it
was a thousand times cruder in
the weaving than any bird-nest.
But it had one feature that I
have never seen attached to any
bird-nest, namely, a roof.
Oh, not a roof such as modern
man makes! Nor a roof such as
is made by the lowest aborigines
of to-day. It was infinitely
more clumsy than the clumsiest
handiwork of man--of man as we
know him. It was put together
in a casual, helter-skelter sort
of way. Above the fork of the
tree whereon we rested was a
pile of dead branches and brush.
Four or five adjacent forks held
what I may term the various ridge-poles.
These were merely stout sticks
an inch or so in diameter. On
them rested the brush and branches.
These seemed to have been tossed
on almost aimlessly. There was
no attempt at thatching. And
I must confess that the roof
leaked miserably in a heavy rain.
But the Chatterer. He made
home-life a burden for both my
mother and me--and by home-life
I mean, not the leaky nest in
the tree, but the group-life
of the three of us. He was most
malicious in his persecution
of me. That was the one purpose
to which he held steadfastly
for longer than five minutes.
Also, as time went by, my mother
was less eager in her defence
of me. I think, what of the continuous
rows raised by the Chatterer,
that I must have become a nuisance
to her. At any rate, the situation
went from bad to worse so rapidly
that I should soon, of my own
volition, have left home. But
the satisfaction of performing
so independent an act was denied
me. Before I was ready to go,
I was thrown out. And I mean
this literally.
The opportunity came to the
Chatterer one day when I was
alone in the nest. My mother
and the Chatterer had gone away
together toward the blueberry
swamp. He must have planned the
whole thing, for I heard him
returning alone through the forest,
roaring with self-induced rage
as he came. Like all the men
of our horde, when they were
angry or were trying to make
themselves angry, he stopped
now and again to hammer on his
chest with his fist.
I realized the helplessness
of my situation, and crouched
trembling in the nest. The Chatterer
came directly to the tree--I
remember it was an oak tree--and
began to climb up. And he never
ceased for a moment from his
infernal row. As I have said,
our language was extremely meagre,
and he must have strained it
by the variety of ways in which
he informed me of his undying
hatred of me and of his intention
there and then to have it out
with me.
As he climbed to the fork,
I fled out the great horizontal
limb. He followed me, and out
I went, farther and farther.
At last I was out amongst the
small twigs and leaves. The Chatterer
was ever a coward, and greater
always than any anger he ever
worked up was his caution. He
was afraid to follow me out amongst
the leaves and twigs. For that
matter, his greater weight would
have crashed him through the
foliage before he could have
got to me.
But it was not necessary for
him to reach me, and well he
knew it, the scoundrel! With
a malevolent expression on his
face, his beady eyes gleaming
with cruel intelligence, he began
teetering. Teetering!--and with
me out on the very edge of the
bough, clutching at the twigs
that broke continually with my
weight. Twenty feet beneath me
was the earth.
Wildly and more--wildly he
teetered, grinning at me his
gloating hatred. Then came the
end. All four holds broke at
the same time, and I fell, back-downward,
looking up at him, my hands and
feet still clutching the broken
twigs. Luckily, there were no
wild pigs under me, and my fall
was broken by the tough and springy
bushes.
Usually, my falls destroy my
dreams, the nervous shock being
sufficient to bridge the thousand
centuries in an instant and hurl
me wide awake into my little
bed, where, perchance, I lie
sweating and trembling and hear
the cuckoo clock calling the
hour in the hall. But this dream
of my leaving home I have had
many times, and never yet have
I been awakened by it. Always
do I crash, shrieking, down through
the brush and fetch up with a
bump on the ground.
Scratched and bruised and whimpering,
I lay where I had fallen. Peering
up through the bushes, I could
see the Chatterer. He had set
up a demoniacal chant of joy
and was keeping time to it with
his teetering. I quickly hushed
my whimpering. I was no longer
in the safety of the trees, and
I knew the danger I ran of bringing
upon myself the hunting animals
by too audible an expression
of my grief.
I remember, as my sobs died
down, that I became interested
in watching the strange light-effects
produced by partially opening
and closing my tear-wet eyelids.
Then I began to investigate,
and found that I was not so very
badly damaged by my fall. I had
lost some hair and hide, here
and there; the sharp and jagged
end of a broken branch had thrust
fully an inch into my forearm;
and my right hip, which had borne
the brunt of my contact with
the ground, was aching intolerably.
But these, after all, were only
petty hurts. No bones were broken,
and in those days the flesh of
man had finer healing qualities
than it has to-day. Yet it was
a severe fall, for I limped with
my injured hip for fully a week
afterward.
Next, as I lay in the bushes,
there came upon me a feeling
of desolation, a consciousness
that I was homeless. I made up
my mind never to return to my
mother and the Chatterer. I would
go far away through the terrible
forest, and find some tree for
myself in which to roost. As
for food, I knew where to find
it. For the last year at least
I had not been beholden to my
mother for food. All she had
furnished me was protection and
guidance.
I crawled softly out through
the bushes. Once I looked back
and saw the Chatterer still chanting
and teetering. It was not a pleasant
sight. I knew pretty well how
to be cautious, and I was exceedingly
careful on this my first journey
in the world.
I gave no thought as to where
I was going. I had but one purpose,
and that was to go away beyond
the reach of the Chatterer. I
climbed into the trees and wandered
on amongst them for hours, passing
from tree to tree and never touching
the ground. But I did not go
in any particular direction,
nor did I travel steadily. It
was my nature, as it was the
nature of all my folk, to be
inconsequential. Besides, I was
a mere child, and I stopped a
great deal to play by the way.
The events that befell me on
my leaving home are very vague
in my mind. My dreams do not
cover them. Much has my other-self
forgotten, and particularly at
this very period. Nor have I
been able to frame up the various
dreams so as to bridge the gap
between my leaving the home-tree
and my arrival at the caves.
I remember that several times
I came to open spaces. These
I crossed in great trepidation,
descending to the ground and
running at the top of my speed.
I remember that there were days
of rain and days of sunshine,
so that I must have wandered
alone for quite a time. I especially
dream of my misery in the rain,
and of my sufferings from hunger
and how I appeased it. One very
strong impression is of hunting
little lizards on the rocky top
of an open knoll. They ran under
the rocks, and most of them escaped;
but occasionally I turned over
a stone and caught one. I was
frightened away from this knoll
by snakes. They did not pursue
me. They were merely basking
on flat rocks in the sun. But
such was my inherited fear of
them that I fled as fast as if
they had been after me.
Then I gnawed bitter bark from
young trees. I remember vaguely
the eating of many green nuts,
with soft shells and milky kernels.
And I remember most distinctly
suffering from a stomach-ache.
It may have been caused by the
green nuts, and maybe by the
lizards. I do not know. But I
do know that I was fortunate
in not being devoured during
the several hours I was knotted
up on the ground with the colic.
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