ate at the
circus! That they do gaze and smack their overhanging lips I know,
because, after going through their cannibalistic dance, they sat behind
me and howled in a subdued manner. The North American Indian who
occupied an adjoining seat, favored me with a translation of their
charming conversation, by which I learned many important facts
concerning man as an article of diet. It appears that babies, after all,
do not make the daintiest morsels. Tender they are, of course, but,
being immature, they have not the rich flavor of a youthful adult. This
seems reasonable. Veal is tender, but can it be favorably compared with
beef? The cases are parallel. The embossed young men consider babies
excellent for _entrees_, but for roasts there is nothing like plump
maidens in their teens. Men of twenty are not bad eating. When older,
they are invariably boiled. Commenting upon the audience, the critics
did not consider it appetizing; and, strange as it may appear, I felt
somewhat hurt by the remark, for who is not vain enough to wish to look
good enough to eat? Fancy being shipwrecked off the Fiji Islands, and
discarded by cannibals as a tough subject, while your companions are
literally killed with attention! Can you not imagine, that, under such
circumstances, a peculiar jealousy of the superior tenderness of your
friends would be a thorn in the flesh, rendering existence a temporary
burden? If we lived among people who adored squinting, should we not all
take to it, and cherish it as the apple of our eye? And if we fell among
anthropophagi, would not our love of approbation make us long to be as
succulent as young pigs? What glory to escape from the jaws of death, if
the jaws repudiate us? So long as memory holds a seat in this distracted
brain, I shall entertain unpleasant feelings toward the embossed young
gentlemen who did not sigh to fasten their affections--otherwise their
teeth--on me. It was worse than a crime: it was bad taste.

Roaming among the wild animals, I made the acquaintance of the
cassowary, in which I have been deeply interested since childhood's
sunny hours, for then't was oft I sang a touching hymn running thus:

"If I were a cassowary
Far away in Timbuctoo,
I should eat a missionary,
Hat, and boots, and hymn-book too."

From that hour the cassowary occupied a large niche in my heart. The
desire to gaze upon a bird capable of digesting food to which even the
ostrich never aspired,