him instead of expending his anger on the hand that holds it.

Now, every Girton girl is well aware that the opossum, though it is a
marsupial too, differs inexpressibly in psychological development from
the kangaroo and the wombat. Your opossum, in short, is active, sly,
and extremely intelligent. He knows his way about the world he lives
in. 'A 'possum up a gum-tree' is accepted by the observant American
mind as the very incarnation of animal cleverness, cunning, and
duplicity. In negro folk-lore the resourceful 'possum takes the place
of Reynard the Fox in European stories: he is the Macchiavelli of wild
beasts: there is no ruse on earth of which he isn't amply capable, no
artful trick which he can't design and execute, no wily manoeuvre which
he can't contrive and carry to an end successfully. All guile and
intrigue, the 'possum can circumvent even Uncle Remus himself by his
crafty diplomacy. And what is it that makes all the difference between
this 'cute Yankee marsupial and his backward and belated Australian
cousins? Why, nothing but the possession of a prehensile hand and tail.
Therein lies the whole secret. The opossum's hind foot has a genuine
opposable thumb; and he also uses his tail in climbing as a
supernumerary hand, almost as much as do any of the monkeys. He often
suspends himself by it, like an acrobat, swings his body to and fro to
get up steam, then lets go suddenly, and flies away to a distant
branch, which he clutches by means of his hand-like hind feet. If the
toes play him false, he can 'recover his tip,' as circus-folk put it,
with his prehensile tail. The consequence is that the opossum, being
able to form for himself clear and accurate conceptions of the real
shapes and relations of things by these two distinct grasping organs,
has acquired an unusual amount of general intelligence. And further, in
the keen competition of the American continent, he has been forced to
develop an amount of cleverness and low cunning which leaves his
Australian poor relations far behind in the Middle Ages of evolution.

At the risk of seeming to run off at a tangent and forsake our
ostensible subject, pretty Poll, altogether, I must just pause for one
moment more to answer an objection which I know has been trembling on
the tip of your tongue any time the last five minutes. You've been
waiting till you could get a word in edgeways to give me a friendly
nudge and remark very wisely, 'But look here, I say; how abo