The Booking-Clerk and Buckland
Mr. Frank Buckland had been in France and was returning via Southampton, with an overcoat stuffed with natural history specimens of all sorts, dead and alive. Among them was a monkey, which was domiciled in a large inside breast-pocket. As Buckland was taking his ticket, Jocko thrust up his head and attracted the attention of the booking-clerk, who immediately—and very properly—said, “You must take a ticket for that dog, if it’s going with you.” “Dog,” said Buckland, “it’s no dog, it’s a monkey.” “It is a dog,” replied the clerk. “It’s a monkey,” retorted Buckland, and proceeded to show the whole animal, but without convincing the clerk, who insisted on five shillings for the dog-ticket to London. Nettled at this, Buckland plunged his hand into another pocket and produced a tortoise, and laying it on the sill of the ticket window said, “Perhaps you’ll call that a dog too.” The clerk inspected the tortoise. “No,” said he, “we make no charge for them—they’re insects.”