moment through a little pocket microscope which I noticed, hanging
like an eyeglass round his neck, and which I learned afterward quite
affectionately to associate with him. Then, as we walked on, he
remarked:

"But, of course, we are yet very imperfectly civilized. Humanity is a
lesson learned very slowly by the human race. Yet we are learning it by
degrees, yes! we are learning it," and he threw out his long stride more
emphatically--the stride of one accustomed to long daily tramps on the
hills.

"Strange, that principle of cruelty in the universe!" he resumed, after
a pause in which he had walked on in silence. "Very strange. To me it is
the most mysterious of all things--though, I suppose, after all, it is
no more mysterious than pity. When, I wonder, did pity begin? Who was
the first human being to pity another? How strange he must have seemed
to the others, how incomprehensible and ridiculous--not to say
dangerous! There can be little doubt that he was promptly dispatched
with stone axes as an enemy of a respectable murderous society."

"I expect," said I "that our friends the fox-hunters would take a
similar view of our remarks on their sport."

"No doubt--and perhaps turn their hounds on us! A man hunt! 'Give me the
hunting of man!' as a brutal young poet we know of recently sang."

"How different was the spirit of Emerson's old verse," I said:

"Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?...