better, literally by force. If Pedder weren't such an old stickler for
propriety, I could go more into detail. You needn't look offended, Ped,
you know you are very easily shocked, and that you make it unpleasant
for everybody. He was taken on by the English consul at Teerak, who was
a good fellow, and clothed, and taught to speak English, and, as a
beginning, to work in the garden. Indoor work seemed to have almost the
effect of nauseating him; and houses and closed doors threw him at first
into frenzies of fear, and always made him miserable. It was apparent in
his face, but more in his way of putting up his fists when in doubt,
that he wasn't Dutch nor German nor French. He was probably English,
they thought, but he might have been American, and so they had an
orthodox christening and named him Jonathan Bull. Of course, after he
got the trick of speech, they found out, by putting two and two
together, just about who and what he was; and that he was of English
parentage. But, of course, they had to let the name stand.

"The first thing, he told me, that ever came to him in the way of a
thought was that he was different from his parents--that they couldn't
see, nor hear, nor make a noise as he could. He could remember sitting
comfortably in the mud at low tide and being convulsed with laughter at
his mother's efforts to find a fat mussel that was within a few inches
of her hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made
paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so
familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, hand in hand,
with considerable precision and alacrity. It was one of his earliest
mischievous instincts to place obstacles in those paths, and take a
humorous view of the consequent tumbles.

"The only intercourse that he could have with his parents was, of
course, by sense of touch. And he told me that, whenever they could