Monkeys at a Wedding Breakfast.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 82, 27 December 1884, Page 6

Monkeys at a Wedding Breakfast.

I was married in India, I engaged tor oui honeymoon a little house — sixteen miles 01 so from any other habitation of white men— that stood on the steep white cliffs of the Nerbudda ltiver, which hero flows through a, canon cf pure white marble. Close beside our hoiibo was a little hut, where i\ holy man lived in charge of an adjoining shrine, earning money for himself and the shrine by polishing little pieces oi marble as mementoes for visitors. It was a ■wonderful place altogether, and, while my wife went in to change her dress, the servants laid breakfast on the vcvandah overlooking the liver. At the clatter of the plates there began to come down from the big tree that overshadowed the house, and up the tiees that grew in the ravine behind it, from the house-roof itself, from everyuhere, a multitude of solemn monkeys. They came up singly, and in couples, and in families, and took their places without noise or fuss on the verandah, and sat there, like an audience waiting tor an entertainment to commence. And when everything was ready, the breakfast all laid, the monkeys all seated, I in to call my .vife. •' Breakfast is ready, and they are all waiting," I said. "Who are waiting?" she asked, in dismay. "I thought were going to be alone, and 1 was just coming out in my dressing gown." "Never mind," I said. "The people about here are not very fashionably dressed them&elvos. They -wear pretty much the same things all the year round." And so my wife came out. Imagine, then, her astonishment. In the middle of the vciandah stood our breakfast table, and all tho )est of the space, as well as the Killings on the steps, -v\as covered with an immei^e company of monkeys, as grave a? possible, and as motionless and silent as if they were stuffed. Only their eyes kept blinking and their little round ears kept twitching. Laughing heartily— at which tho monkeys only looked all the graver —my wife sat down. " Will they eat anything ?" asked she. "Try them," I said. So sho picked up a biscuit and threw it among tho company. And the result ! Three hundred monkeys jumped up in the air like one, and just for one instant there was a riot that defies description. The next instant every monkey was sitting in its place as solemn and serious as if it had never moved. Only their eyes winked and and their cars twitched. My wife threw them another biscuit, and again tho riot, and then another and another and another. But at length we had given .way all that m c had to give, and got up to go. The monkeys at once rose, every monkey on the verandah, and advancing gravely to the steps, walked down them in a solemn procession, old and young togethei, and dispersed for the day's occupations.