acute exposure to the heat. From
these causes, and because it was by nature a hound which even on the
darkest night could be detected at a more than reasonable distance away,
while at all times it did not hesitate to shake itself freely into
the various prepared viands, this person (and doubtless others also)
regarded it with an emotion very unfavourable towards its prolonged
existence; but observing from the first that those who permitted
themselves to be deposited upon, and their hands and even their faces to
be hound-tongue-defiled with the most externally cheerful spirit of
word suppression, invariably received the most desirable of the allotted
portions of food, he judged it prudent and conducive to a settled
digestion to greet it with favourable terms and actions, and to refer
frequently to its well-displayed proportions, and to the agile dexterity
which it certainly maintained in breathing into the contents of every
dish. Thus the matter may be regarded as being positioned for a space of
time.

One evening I returned at the appointed gong-stroke of dinner, and was
beginning, according to my custom, to greet the hound with ingratiating
politeness, when the one of chief authority held up a reproving hand, at
the same time exclaiming:

"No, Mr. Kong, you must not encourage Hercules with your amiable
condescension, for just now he is in very bad odour with us all."

"Undoubtedly," replied this person, somewhat puzzled, nevertheless, that
the imperfection should thus be referred to openly by one who hitherto
had not hesitated to caress the hound with most intimate details,
"undoubtedly the surrounding has a highly concentrated acuteness
to-night, but the ever-present characteristic of the hound Hercules is
by no means new, for whenever he is in the room--"

At this point it is necessary to explain that the ceremonial etiquette
of these barbarian outcasts is both conflicting and involved. Upon
most of the ordinary occasions of life to obtrude oneself within the
conversation of another is a thing not to be done, yet repeatedly when
this unpretentious person has been relating his experience or inquiring
into the nature and meaning of certain matters which he has witnessed,
he has become aware that his words have been obliterated, as it were,
and his remarks diverted from their original intention by the sudden and
unanticipated desire of those present to express themselves loudly on
some topic of not really engrossing