g
animals, but with the air came the dust, and the dust annoyed Romulus
greatly. Never before had he longed for freedom so intensely. Ever
since he could remember he had been in a cage like this; it had been so
all through his childhood and youth. There was no trace in his memory
of days when he of a time had been free. Not the faintest recollection
existed of the time when he might have swung in the branches of
equatorial forests. To him life was a desolation and a despair, and the
poignancy of it all was sharpened by the clouds of dust which rolled
through the grated door.

Romulus, thereupon, sought means of escape. Nimble, deft,
sharp-sighted, he found a weak place in his prison, worked it open, and
leaped forth upon the highway a free anthropoid ape. None of the
sleepy, weary drivers noticed his escape, and a proper sense of caution
caused him to seek security under a way-side shrub until the procession
had safely passed. Then the whole world lay before him.

His freedom was large and sweet, but, for a while, perplexing. An
almost instinctive leap to catch the trapeze-bar that had hung in his
cage brought his hands in contact with only unresisting air. This
confused and somewhat frightened him. The world seemed much broader and
brighter since the black bars of his prison no longer striped his
vision. And then, to his amazement, in place of the dingy covering of
his cage appeared a vast and awful expanse of blue heaven, the
tremendous depth and distance of which terrified him.

The scampering of a ground-squirrel seeking its burrow soon caught his
notice, and he watched the little animal with great curiosity. Then he
ran to the burrow, and hurt his feet on the sharp wheat-stubble. This
made him more cautious. Not finding the squirrel, he looked about and
discovered two owls sitting on a little mound not far away. Their
solemn gaze fastened upon him inspired him with awe, but his curiosity
would not permit him to forego a closer view. He cautiously crept
towards them; then he stopped, sat down, and made grotesque faces at
them. This had no effect. He scratched his head and thought. Then he
made a feint as though he would pounce upon them, and they flew.
Romulus gazed at them with the greatest amazement, for never before had
he seen anything skim through the air. But the world was so wide and
freedom so large that surely everything free ought to fly; so Romulus
sprang into the air and made motions with his arms lik