A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious

ant at his work. I found nothing new in him–certainly

nothing to change my opinion of him. It seems to me that

in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely

overrated bird. During many summers, now, I have watched him,

when I ought to have been in better business, and I have

not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any

more sense than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant,

of course; I have had no experience of those wonderful

Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies,

hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular

ants may be all that the naturalist paints them,

but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham.

I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest-working

creature in the world–when anybody is looking–but his

leather-headedness is the point I make against him.

He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what

does he do? Go home? No–he goes anywhere but home.

He doesn’t know where home is. His home may be only

three feet away–no matter, he can’t find it. He makes

his capture, as I have said; it is generally something

which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else;

it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be;

he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it;

he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts;

not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly

and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful

of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead

of going around it, he climbs over it backward dragging

his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side,

jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes,

moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it

this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment,

turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder

and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes

tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed;

it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it;

and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property

to the top–which is as bright a thing to do as it would

be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris

by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he

finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance

at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down,

and starts off once more–as usual, in a new direction.

At the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches

of the place he started from and lays his burden down;

meantime he as been over all the ground for two yards around,

and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across.

Now he wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs,

and then marches aimlessly off, in as violently a hurry

as ever. He does not remember to have ever seen it before;

he looks around to see which is not the way home, grabs his

bundle and starts; he goes through the same adventures he

had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along.

Evidently the friend remarks that a last year’s grasshopper

leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he

got it. Evidently the proprietor does not remember

exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it “around

here somewhere.” Evidently the friend contracts to help

him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly

antic (pun not intended), then take hold of opposite ends

of that grasshopper leg a nd begin to tug with all their

might in opposite directions. Presently they take a rest

and confer together. They decide that something is wrong,

they can’t make out what. Then they go at it again,

just as before. Same result. Mutual recriminations follow.

Evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist.