 | The collected works of Ambrose Bierce |  |
251
TWO SHOWS
The showman (blessing in a thousand shapes!)Parades a “School of Educated Apes!”
Small education's needed, I opine,
Or native wit, to make a monkey shine.
The brute exhibited has naught to do
But ape the larger apes that come to view—
The hoodlum with his horrible grimace,
Long upper lip and furtive, shuffling pace,
Significant reminders of the time
When hunters, not policemen, made him climb;
The lady loafer with her draggling “trail,”
That free translation of an ancient tail;
The sand-lot quadrumane in hairy suit,
Whose heels are thumbs perverted by the boot;
The painted actress throwing down the gage
To elder artists of the sylvan stage,
Proving that in the time of Noah's flood
Two ape-skins held her whole profession's blood;
The critic waiting, like a hungry pup,
To write the school—perhaps to eat it—up,
As chance or luck occasion may reveal
To earn a dollar or maraud a meal.
To view the school of apes these creatures go,
Unconscious that themselves are half the show.
252
To copy them as they have copied him,
Will call him “educated.” Of a verity
There's much to learn by studying posterity.
| The collected works of Ambrose Bierce | |