Cat in Tree
Presently the tuneful sounds drew near, whereupon she began to fidget; ending by shinning up a tree, just as the dogs burst into view below her,and stifled their songs upon the body of their victim before her eyes—which protruded.
"There is an indefinable charm," said she—"a subtle and tender spell—a mystery—a conundrum, as it were—in the sounds of an unseen orchestra. This is quite lost when the performers are visible to the audience. Distant music (if any) for your obedient servant!"
Having been taught to turn his scraps of bad Persian into choice Latin, a parrot was puffed up with conceit.
"Observe," said he, "the superiority I may boast by virtue of my classical education: I can chatter flat nonsense in the language of Cicero."
"I would advise you," said his master, quietly, "to let it be of a different character from that chattered by some of Mr. Cicero's most admired compatriots, if you value the priviledge of hanging at that public window. 'Commit no mythology,' please."
The exquisite fancies of a remote age may not be imitated in this; not, perhaps, from a lack of talent, so much as from a fear of arrest.
A rat, finding a file, smelt it all over, bit it gently, and observed that, as it did not seem to be rich enough to produce dyspepsia, he would venture to make a meal of it. So he gnawed it intosmithareens[D]without the slightest injury to his teeth. With his morals the case was somewhat different. For the file was a file of newspapers, and his system became so saturated with the "spirit of the Press" that he went off and called his aged father a "lingering contemporary;" advised the correction of brief tails by amputation; lauded the skill of a quack rodentist for money; and, upon what would otherwise have been his death-bed, essayed a lie of such phenomenal magnitudethat it stuck in his throat, and prevented him breathing his last. All this crime, and misery, and other nonsense, because he was too lazy to worry about and find a file of nutritious fables.
This tale shows the folly of eating everything you happen to fancy. Consider, moreover, the danger of such a course to your neighbour's wife.
"I should like to climb up you, if you don't mind," cried an ivy to a young oak.
"Oh, certainly; come along," was the cheerful assent.
So she started up, and finding she could grow faster than he, she wound round and round him until she had passed up all the line she had. The oak, however, continued to grow, and as she could not disengage her coils, she was just lifted out by the root. So that ends the oak-and-ivy business, and removes a powerful temptation from the path of the young writer.
A merchant of Cairo gave a grand feast. In the midst of the revelry, the great doors of the dining-hall were pushed open from the outside, and the guests were surprised and grieved by the advent of a crocodile of a tun's girth, and as long as the moral law.
"Thought I 'd look in," said he, simply, but not without a certain grave dignity.
"But," cried the host, from the top of the table, "I did not invite any saurians."
"No—I know yer didn't; it's the old thing, it is: never no wacancies for saurians—saurians should orter keep theirselvestotheirselves—no sauriansneed apply. I got it all by 'eart, I tell yer. But don't give yerself no distress; I didn't come to beg; thank 'eaven I ain't drove to that yet—leastwise I ain't done it. But I thought as 'ow yer'd need a dish to throw slops and broken wittles in it; which I fetched along this 'ere."
And the willing creature lifted off the cover by erecting the upper half of his head till the snout of him smote the ceiling.
Open servitude is better than covert begging.
A gander being annoyed by the assiduous attendance of his ugly reflection in the water, determined that he would prosecute future voyages in a less susceptible element. So he essayed a sail upon the placid bosom of a clay-bank. This kind of navigation did not meet his expectations, however, and he returned with dogged despair to his pond, resolved to make a final cruise and go out of commission. He was delighted to find that the clay adhering to his hull so defiled the water that it gave back no image of him. After that, whenever he left port, he was careful to be well clayed along the water-line.
The lesson of this is that if all geese are alike, we can banish unpleasant reflections by befouling ourselves. This is worth knowing.
The belly and the members of the human body were in a riot. (This is not the riot recorded by an inferior writer, but a more notable and authentic one.) After exhausting the well-known arguments, they had recourse to the appropriate threat, whenthe man to whom they belonged thought it time forhimto be heard, in his capacity as a unit.
"Deuce take you!" he roared. "Things have come to a pretty pass if a fellow cannot walk out of a fine morning without alarming the town by a disgraceful squabble between his component parts! I am reasonably impartial, I hope, but man's devotion is due to his deity: I espouse the cause of my belly."
Hearing this, the members were thrown into so extraordinary confusion that the man was arrested for a windmill.
As a rule, don't "take sides." Sides of bacon, however, may be temperately acquired.
A man dropping from a balloon struck against a soaring eagle.
"I beg your pardon," said he, continuing his descent; "I nevercouldkeep off eagles when in my descending node."
"It is agreeable to meet so pleasing a gentleman, even without previous appointment," said the bird, looking admiringly down upon the lessening aeronaut; "he is the very pink of politeness. How extremely nice his liver must be. I will follow him down and arrange his simple obsequies."
This fable is narrated for its intrinsic worth.
To escape from a peasant who had come suddenly upon him, an opossum adopted his favourite expedient of counterfeiting death.
"I suppose," said the peasant, "that ninety-nine men in a hundred would go away and leave this poor creature's body to the beasts of prey." [It isnotorious that man is the only living thing that will eat the animal.] "ButIwill give him good burial."
So he dug a hole, and was about tumbling him into it, when a solemn voice appeared to emanate from the corpse: "Let the dead bury their dead!"
"Whatever spirit hath wrought this miracle," cried the peasant, dropping upon his knees, "let him but add the trifling explanation ofhowthe dead can perform this or any similar rite, and I am obedience itself. Otherwise, in goes Mr. 'Possum by these hands."
"Ah!" meditated the unhappy beast, "I have performed one miracle, but I can't keep it up all day, you know. The explanation demanded is a trifle too heavy for even the ponderous ingenuity of a marsupial."
And he permitted himself to be sodded over.
If the reader knows what lesson is conveyed by this narrative, he knows—just what the writer knows.
Three animals on board a sinking ship prepared to take to the water. It was agreed among them that the bear should be lowered alongside; the mouse (who was to act as pilot) should embark upon him at once, to beat off the drowning sailors; and the monkey should follow, with provisions for the expedition—which arrangement was successfully carried out. The fourth day out from the wreck, the bear began to propound a series of leading questions concerning dinner; when it appeared that the monkey had provided but a single nut.
"I thought this would keep me awhile," he explained, "and you could eat the pilot."
Hearing this, the mouse vanished like a flashinto the bear's ear, and fearing the hungry beast would then demand the nut, the monkey hastily devoured it. Not being in a position to insist upon his rights, the bear merely gobbled up the monkey.
Thirsty Lamb
A lamb suffering from thirst went to a brook to drink. Putting his nose to the water, he was interested to feel it bitten by a fish. Not liking fish, he drew back and sought another place; but his persecutor getting there before him administered the same rebuff. The lamb being rather persevering, and the fish having no appointments for that day, this was repeated a few thousand times, when the former felt justified in swearing:
"I'm eternally boiled!" said he, "if ever Iexperienced so many fish in all my life. It is discouraging. It inspires me with mint sauce and green peas."
He probably meant amazement and fear; under the influence of powerful emotions even lambs will talk "shop."
"Well, good bye," said his tormentor, taking a final nip at the animal's muzzle; "I should like to amuse you some more; but I have other fish to fry."
This tale teaches a good quantity of lessons; but it doesnotteach why this fish should have persecuted this lamb.
A mole, in pursuing certain geological researches, came upon the buried carcase of a mule, and was about to tunnel him.
"Slow down, my good friend," said the deceased. "Push your mining operations in a less sacrilegious direction. Respect the dead, as you hope for death!"
"You have that about you," said the gnome, "that must make your grave respected in a certain sense, for at least such a period as your immortal part may require for perfect exhalation. The immunity I accord is not conceded to your sanctity, but extorted by your scent. The sepulchres of moles only are sacred."
To moles, the body of a lifeless muleA dead mule's carcase is, and nothing more.
To moles, the body of a lifeless muleA dead mule's carcase is, and nothing more.
To moles, the body of a lifeless mule
A dead mule's carcase is, and nothing more.
"I think I'll set my sting into you, my obstructive friend," said a bee to an iron pump against which she had flown; "you are always more or less in the way."
"If you do," retorted the other, "I'll pump on you, if I can get any one to work my handle."
Exasperated by this impotent conservative threat, she pushed her little dart against him with all her vigour. When she tried to sheathe it again she couldn't, but she still made herself useful about the hive by hooking on to small articles and dragging them about. But no other bee would sleep with her after this; and so, by her ill-judged resentment, she was self-condemmed to a solitary cell.
The young reader may profitably beware.
A Chinese dog, who had been much abroad with his master, was asked, upon his return, to state the most ludicrous fact he had observed.
"There is a country," said he, "the people of which are eternally speaking about 'Persian honesty,' 'Persian courage,' 'Persian loyalty,' 'Persian love of fair play,' &c., as if the Persians enjoyed a clear monopoly of these universal virtues. What is more, they speak thus in blind good faith—with a dense gravity of conviction that is simply amazing."
"But," urged the auditors, "we requested something ludicrous, not amazing."
"Exactly; the ludicrous part is the name of their country, which is—"
"What?"
"Persia."
There was a calf, who, suspecting the purity of the milk supplied him by his dam, resolved to transfer his patronage to the barn-yard pump.
"Better," said he, "a pure article of water, than a diet that is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl."
But, although extremely regular in his new diet—taking it all the time—he did not seem to thrive as might have been expected. The larger orders he drew, the thinner and the more transparent he became; and at last, when the shadow of his person had become to him a vague and unreal memory, he repented, and applied to be reinstated in his comfortable sinecure at the maternal udder.
"Ah! my prodigal son," said the old lady, lowering her horns as if to permit him to weep upon her neck, "I regret that it is out of my power to celebrate your return by killing the fatted calf; but what I can I will do."
And she killed him instead.
Mot herl yaff ecti onk nocksal loth ervir tu esperfec tlyc old.[E]
"There, now," said a kitten, triumphantly, laying a passive mouse at the feet of her mother. "I flatter myself I am coming on with a reasonable degree of rapidity. What will become of the minor quadrupeds when I have attained my full strength and ferocity, it is mournful to conjecture!"
"Did he give you much trouble?" inquired the aged ornament of the hearth-side, with a look of tender solicitude.
"Trouble!" echoed the kitten, "I never had such a fight in all my life! He was a downright savage—in his day."
"My Falstaffian issue," rejoined the Tabby, dropping her eyelids and composing her head for a quiet sleep, "the above is atoymouse."
A crab who had travelled from the mouth of the Indus all the way to Ispahan, knocked, with much chuckling, at the door of the King's physician.
"Who's there?" shouted the doctor, from his divan within.
"A bad case ofcancer," was the complacent reply.
"Good!" returned the doctor; "I'llcureyou, my friend."
So saying, he conducted his facetious patient into the kitchen, and potted him in pickle. It cured him—of practical jocularity.
May the fable healyou, if you are afflicted with that form of evil.
A certain magician owned a learned pig, who had lived a cleanly gentlemanly life, achieving great fame, and winning the hearts of all the people. But perceiving he was not happy, the magician, by a process easily explained did space permit, transformed him into a man. Straightway the creature abandoned his cards, his timepiece, his musical instruments, and all other devices of his profession, and betook him to a pool of mud, wherein he inhumed himself to the tip of his nose.
"Ten minutes ago," said the magician reprovingly, "you would have scorned to do an act like that."
"True," replied the biped, with a contented grunt; "I was then a learned pig; I am now a learned man."
"Nature has been very kind to her creatures," said a giraffe to an elephant. "For example, yourneck being so very short, she has given you a proboscis wherewith to reach your food; and I having no proboscis, she has bestowed upon me a long neck."
"I think, my good friend, you have been among the theologians," said the elephant. "I doubt if I am clever enough to argue with you. I can only say it does not strike me that way."
"But, really," persisted the giraffe, "you must confess your trunk is a great convenience, in that it enables you to reach the high branches of which you are so fond, even as my long neck enables me."
"Perhaps," mused the ungrateful pachyderm, "if we could not reach the higher branches, we should develop a taste for the lower ones."
"In any case," was the rejoinder, "we can never be sufficiently thankful that we are unlike the lowly hippopotamus, who can reach neither the one nor the other."
"Ah! yes," the elephant assented, "there does not seem to have been enough of Nature's kindness to go round."
"But the hippopotamus has his roots and his rushes."
"It is not easy to see how, with his present appliances, he could obtain anything else."
This fable teaches nothing; for those who perceive the meaning of it either knew it before, or will not be taught.
A pious heathen who was currying favour with his wooden deity by sitting for some years motionless in a treeless plain, observed a young ivy putting forth her tender shoots at his feet. He thought he could endure the additional martyrdom of a littleshade, and begged her to make herself quite at home.
"Exactly," said the plant; "it is my mission to adorn venerable ruins."
She lapped her clinging tendrils about his wasted shanks, and in six months had mantled him in green.
"It is now time," said the devotee, a year later, "for me to fulfil the remainder of my religious vow. I must put in a few seasons of howling and leaping. You have been very good, but I no longer require your gentle ministrations."
"But I require yours," replied the vine; "you have become a second nature to me. Let others indulge in the delights of gymnastic worship; you and I will 'surfer and be strong'—respectively."
The devotee muttered something about the division of labour, and his bones are still pointed out to the pilgrim.
A fox seeing a swan afloat, called out:
"What ship is that? I wish to take passage by your line."
"Got a ticket?" inquired the fowl.
"No; I'll make it all right with the company, though."
So the swan moored alongside, and he embarked,—deck passage. When they were well off shore the fox intimated that dinner would be agreeable.
"I would advise you not to try the ship's provisions," said the bird; "we have only salt meat on board. Beware the scurvy!"
"You are quite right," replied the passenger; "I'll see if I can stay my stomach with the foremast."
So saying he bit off her neck, and she immediately capsizing, he was drowned.
MORAL—highly so, but not instructive.
A monkey finding a heap of cocoa-nuts, gnawed into one, then dropped it, gagging hideously.
"Now, this is whatIcall perfectly disgusting!" said he: "I can never leave anything lying about but some one comes along and puts a quantity of nasty milk into it!"
A cat just then happening to pass that way began rolling the cocoa-nuts about with her paw.
"Yeow!" she exclaimed; "it is enough to vex the soul of a cast-iron dog! Whenever I set out any milk to cool, somebody comes and seals it up tight as a drum!"
Then perceiving one another, and each thinking the other the offender, these enraged animals contended, and wrought a mutual extermination. Whereby two worthy consumers were lost to society, and a quantity of excellent food had to be given to the poor.
A mouse who had overturned an earthern jar was discovered by a cat, who entered from an adjoining room and began to upbraid him in the harshest and most threatening manner.
"You little wretch!" said she, "how dare you knock over that valuable urn? If it had been filled with hot water, and I had been lying before it asleep, I should have been scalded to death."
"If it had been full of water," pleaded the mouse, "it would not have upset."
Cat, Mouse and Urn
"But I might have lain down in it, monster!" persisted the cat.
"No, you couldn't," was the answer; "it is not wide enough."
"Fiend!" shrieked the cat, smashing him with her paw; "I can curl up real small when I try."
Theultima ratioof very angry people is frequently addressed to the ear of the dead.
In crossing a frozen pool, a monkey slipped and fell, striking upon the back of his head with considerable force, so that the ice was very much shattered. A peacock, who was strutting about on shore thinking what a pretty peacock he was, laughed immoderately at the mishap. N.B.—Alllaughter is immoderate when a fellow is hurt—if the fellow is oneself.
"Bah!" exclaimed the sufferer; "if you could see the beautiful prismatic tints I have knocked into this ice, you would laugh out of the other side of your bill. The splendour of your tail is quite eclipsed."
Thus craftily did he inveigle the vain bird, who finally came and spread his tail alongside the fracture for comparison. The gorgeous feathers at once froze fast to the ice, and—in short, that artless fowl passed a very uncomfortable winter.
A volcano, having discharged a few million tons of stones upon a small village, asked the mayor if he thought that a tolerably good supply for building purposes.
"I think," replied that functionary, "if you give us another dash of granite, and just a pinch of old red sandstone, we could manage with what you have already done for us. We would, however, be grateful for the loan of your crater to bake bricks."
"Oh, certainly; parties served at their residences." Then, after the man had gone, the mountain added, with mingled lava and contempt: "The most insatiable people I ever contracted to supply. They shall not have another pebble!"
He banked his fires, and in six weeks was as cold as a neglected pudding. Then might you have seen the heaving of the surface boulders, as the people began stirring forty fathoms beneath.
When you have got quite enough of anything, make it manifest by asking for some more. You won't get it.
"I entertain for you a sentiment of profound amity," said the tiger to the leopard. "And why should I not? for are we not members of the same great feline family?"
"True," replied the leopard, who was engaged in the hopeless endeavour to change his spots; "since we have mutually plundered one another's hunting grounds of everything edible, there remains no grievance to quarrel about. You are a good fellow; let us embrace!"
They did so with the utmost heartiness; which being observed by a contiguous monkey, that animal got up a tree, where he delivered himself of the wisdom following:
"There is nothing so touching as these expressions of mutual regard between animals who are vulgarly believed to hate one another. They render the brief intervals of peace almost endurable to both parties. But the difficulty is, there are so many excellent reasons why these relatives should live in peace, that they won't have time to state them all before the next fight."
A woodpecker, who had bored a multitude of holes in the body of a dead tree, was asked by a robin to explain their purpose.
"As yet, in the infancy of science," replied the woodpecker, "I am quite unable to do so. Some naturalists affirm that I hide acorns in these pits; others maintain that I get worms out of them. I endeavoured for some time to reconcile the two theories; but the worms ate my acorns, and thenwould not come out. Since then, I have left science to work out its own problems, while I work out the holes. I hope the final decision may be in some way advantageous to me; for at my nest I have a number of prepared holes which I can hammer into some suitable tree at a moment's notice. Perhaps I could insert a few into the scientific head."
"No-o-o," said the robin, reflectively, "I should think not. A prepared hole is an idea; I don't think it could get in."
MORAL.—It might be driven in with a steam-hammer.
"Are you going to this great hop?" inquired a spruce cricket of a labouring beetle.
"No," replied he, sadly, "I've got to attend this great ball."
"Blest if I know the difference," drawled a more offensive insect, with his head in an empty silk hat; "and I've been in society all my life. But why was I not invited to either hop or ball?"
He is now invited to the latter.
"Too bad, too bad," said a young Abyssinian to a yawning hippopotamus.
"What is 'too bad?'" inquired the quadruped. "What is the matter with you?"
"Oh,Inever complain," was the reply; "I was only thinking of the niggard economy of Nature in building a great big beast like you and not giving him any mouth."
"H'm, h'm! it was still worse," mused the beast,"to construct a great wit like you and give him no seasonable occasion for the display of his cleverness."
A moment later there were a cracking of bitten bones, a great gush of animal fluids, the vanishing of two black feet—in short, the fatal poisoning of an indiscreet hippopotamus.
The rubbing of a bit of lemon about the beaker's brim is the finishing-touch to a whiskey punch. Much misery may be thus averted.
A salmon vainly attempted to leap up a cascade. After trying a few thousand times, he grew so fatigued that he began to leap less and think more. Suddenly an obvious method of surmounting the difficulty presented itself to the salmonic intelligence.
"Strange," he soliloquized, as well as he could in the water,—"very strange I did not think of it before! I'll go above the fall and leap downwards."
So he went out on the bank, walked round to the upper side of the fall, and found he could leap over quite easily. Ever afterwards when he went up-stream in the spring to be caught, he adopted this plan. He has been heard to remark that the price of salmon might be brought down to a merely nominal figure, if so many would not wear themselves out before getting up to where there is good fishing.
"The son of a jackass," shrieked a haughty mare to a mule who had offended her by expressing an opinion, "should cultivate the simple grace of intellectual humility."
"It is true," was the meek reply, "I cannot boast an illustrious ancestry; but at least I shall never be called upon to blush for my posterity. Yonder mule colt is as proper a son—"
"Yonder mule colt?" interrupted the mare, with a look of ineffable contempt for her auditor; "that ismycolt!"
"The consort of a jackass and the mother of mules," retorted he, quietly, "should cultivate the simple thingamy of intellectual whatsitsname."
The mare muttered something about having some shopping to do, threw on her harness, and went out to call a cab.
"Hi! hi!" squeaked a pig, running after a hen who had just left her nest; "I say, mum, you dropped this 'ere. It looks wal'able; which I fetched it along!" And splitting his long face, he laid a warm egg at her feet.
"You meddlesome bacon!" cackled the ungrateful bird; "if you don't take that orb directly back, I 'll sit on you till I hatch you out of your saddle-cover!"
MORAL.—Virtue is its only reward.
A rustic, preparing to devour an apple, was addressed by a brace of crafty and covetous birds:
"Nice apple that," said one, critically examining it. "I don't wish to disparage it—wouldn't say a word against that vegetable for all the world. But I never can look upon an apple of that variety without thinking of my poisoned nestling! Ah! so plump, and rosy, and—rotten!"
"Just so," said the other. "And you remembermy good father, who perished in that orchard. Strange that so fair a skin should cover so vile a heart!"
Just then another fowl came flying up.
Rustic and Crafty Birds
"I came in, all haste," said he, "to warn you about that fruit. My late lamented wife ate some off the same tree. Alas! how comely to the eye, and how essentially noxious!"
"I am very grateful," the young man said; "but I am unable to comprehend how the sight of this pretty piece of painted confectionery should incite you all to slander your dead relations."
Whereat there was confusion in the demeanour of that feathered trio.
"The Millennium is come," said a lion to a lamb. "Suppose you come out of that fold, and let us lie down together, as it has been foretold we should."
"Been to dinner to-day?" inquired the lamb.
"Not a bite of anything since breakfast," was the reply, "except a few lean swine, a saddle or two, and some old harness."
"I distrust a Millennium," continued the lamb, thoughtfully, "which consistssolelyin our lying down together. My notion of that happy time is that it is a period in which pork and leather are not articles of diet, but in which every respectable lion shall have as much mutton as he can consume. However, you may go over to yonder sunny hill and lie down until I come."
It is singular how a feeling of security tends to develop cunning. If that lamb had been out upon the open plain he would have readily fallen into the snare—and it was studded very thickly with teeth.
"I say, you!" bawled a fat ox in a stall to a lusty young ass who was braying outside; "the like of that is not in good taste!"
"In whose good taste, my adipose censor?" inquired the ass, not too respectfully.
"Why—h'm—ah! I mean it does not suitme. You ought to bellow."
"May I inquire how it happens to be any of your business whether I bellow or bray, or do both—or neither?"
"I cannot tell you," answered the critic, shaking his head despondingly; "I do not at all understandit. I can only say that I have been accustomed to censure all discourse that differs from my own."
"Exactly," said the ass; "you have sought to make an art of impertinence by mistaking preferences for principles. In 'taste' you have invented a word incapable of definition, to denote an idea impossible of expression; and by employing in connection therewith the words 'good' and 'bad,' you indicate a merely subjective process in terms of an objective quality. Such presumption transcends the limit of the merely impudent, and passes into the boundless empyrean of pure cheek!"
At the close of this remarkable harangue, the bovine critic was at a loss for language to express his disapproval. So he said the speech was in bad taste.
A bloated toad, studded with dermal excrescences, was boasting that she was the wartiest creature alive.
"Perhaps you are," said her auditor, emerging from the soil; "but it is a barren and superficial honour. Look at me: I am one solid mole!"
"It is very difficult getting on in the world," sighed a weary snail; "very difficult indeed, with such high rents!"
"You don't mean to say you pay anything for that old rookery!" said a slug, who was characteristically insinuating himself between the stems of the celery intended for dinner. "A miserable old shanty like that, without stables, grounds, or any modern conveniences!"
"Pay!" said the snail, contemptuously; "I'dlike to see you get a semi-detatched villa like this at a nominal rate!"
"Why don't you let your upper apartments to a respectable single party?" urged the slug.
The answer is not recorded.
A hare, pursued by a dog, sought sanctuary in the den of a wolf. It being after business hours, the latter was at home to him.
"Ah!" panted the hare; "how very fortunate! I feel quite safe here, for you dislike dogs quite as much as I do."
"Your security, my small friend," replied the wolf, "depends not upon those points in which you and I agree, but upon those in which I and the dog differ."
"Then you mean to eat me?" inquired the timorous puss.
"No-o-o," drawled the wolf, reflectively, "I should not like to promisethat; I mean to eat a part of you. There may be a tuft of fur, and a toe-nail or two, left for you to go on with. I am hungry, but I am not hoggish."
"The distinction is too fine for me," said the hare, scratching her head.
"That, my friend, is because you have not made a practice of hare-splitting. I have."
"Oyster at home?" inquired a monkey, rapping at the closed shell.
There was no reply. Dropping the knocker, he laid hold of the bell-handle, ringing a loud peal, but without effect.
"Hum, hum!" he mused, with a look of disappointment, "gone to the sea side, I suppose."
So he turned away, thinking he would call again later in the season; but he had not proceeded far before he conceived a brilliant idea. Perhaps there had been a suicide!—or a murder! He would go back and force the door. By way of doing so he obtained a large stone, and smashed in the roof. There had been no murder to justify such audacity, so he committed one.
The funeral was gorgeous. There were mute oysters with wands, drunken oysters with scarves and hat-bands, a sable hearse with hearth-dusters on it, a swindling undertaker's bill, and all the accessories of a first-rate churchyard circus—everything necessary but the corpse. That had been disposed of by the monkey, and the undertaker meanly withheld the use of his own.
MORAL.—A lamb foaled in March makes the best pork when his horns have attained the length of an inch.
"Pray walk into my parlour," said the spider to the fly."That is not quite original," the latter made reply."If that's the way you plagiarize, your fame will be a fib—But I'll walk into your parlour, while I pitch into your crib.But before I cross your threshold, sir, if I may make so free,Pray let me introduce to you my friend, 'the wicked flea.'""How do you?" says the spider, as his welcome he extends;"'How doth the busy little bee,' and all our other friends?""Quite well, I think, and quite unchanged," the flea said; "though I learn,In certain quarters well informed, 'tis feared 'the worm will turn.'""Humph!" said the fly; "I do not understand this talk—not I!""It is 'classical allusion,'" said the spider to the fly.
"Pray walk into my parlour," said the spider to the fly."That is not quite original," the latter made reply."If that's the way you plagiarize, your fame will be a fib—But I'll walk into your parlour, while I pitch into your crib.But before I cross your threshold, sir, if I may make so free,Pray let me introduce to you my friend, 'the wicked flea.'""How do you?" says the spider, as his welcome he extends;"'How doth the busy little bee,' and all our other friends?""Quite well, I think, and quite unchanged," the flea said; "though I learn,In certain quarters well informed, 'tis feared 'the worm will turn.'""Humph!" said the fly; "I do not understand this talk—not I!""It is 'classical allusion,'" said the spider to the fly.
"Pray walk into my parlour," said the spider to the fly.
"That is not quite original," the latter made reply.
"If that's the way you plagiarize, your fame will be a fib—
But I'll walk into your parlour, while I pitch into your crib.
But before I cross your threshold, sir, if I may make so free,
Pray let me introduce to you my friend, 'the wicked flea.'"
"How do you?" says the spider, as his welcome he extends;
"'How doth the busy little bee,' and all our other friends?"
"Quite well, I think, and quite unchanged," the flea said; "though I learn,
In certain quarters well informed, 'tis feared 'the worm will turn.'"
"Humph!" said the fly; "I do not understand this talk—not I!"
"It is 'classical allusion,'" said the spider to the fly.
A polar bear navigating the mid-sea upon the mortal part of a late lamented walrus, soliloquized, in substance, as follows:
"Such liberty of action as I am afflicted with is enough to embarrass any bear that ever bore. I can remain passive, and starve; or I can devour my ship, and drown. I am really unable to decide."
So he sat down to think it over. He considered the question in all its aspects, until he grew quite thin; turned it over and over in his mind until he was too weak to sit up; meditated upon it with a constantly decreasing pulse, a rapidly failing respiration. But he could not make up his mind, and finally expired without having come to a decision.
It appears to me he might almost as well have chosen starvation, at a venture.
A sword-fish having penetrated seven or eight feet into the bottom of a ship, under the impression that he was quarrelling with a whale, was unable to draw out of the fight. The sailors annoyed him a good deal, by pounding with handspikes upon that portion of his horn inside; but he bore it as bravelyas he could, putting the best possible face upon the matter, until he saw a shark swimming by, of whom he inquired the probable destination of the ship.
"Italy, I think," said the other, grinning. "I have private reasons for believing her cargo consists mainly of consumptives."
"Ah!" exclaimed the captive; "Italy, delightful clime of the cerulean orange—the rosy olive! Land of the night-blooming Jesuit, and the fragrantlaszarone! It would be heavenly to run down gondolas in the streets of Venice! Imustgo to Italy."
"Indeed you must," said the shark, darting suddenly aft, where he had caught the gleam of shotted canvas through the blue waters.
But it was fated to be otherwise: some days afterwards the ship and fish passed over a sunken rock which almost grazed the keel. Then the two parted company, with mutual expressions of tender regard, and a report which could be traced by those on board to no trustworthy source.
The foregoing fable shows that a man of good behaviour need not care for money, andvice versâ.
A facetious old cat seeing her kitten sleeping in a bath tub, went down into the cellar and turned on the hot water. (For the convenience of the bathers the bath was arranged in that way; you had to undress, and then go down to the cellar to let on the wet.) No sooner did the kitten remark the unfamiliar sensation, than he departed thence with a willingness quite creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat, and met his mother on the kitchen stairs.
"Aha! my steaming hearty!" cried the eldergrimalkin; "I coveted you when I saw the cook put you in the dinner-pot. If I have a weakness, it is hare—hare nicely dressed, and partially boiled."
Whereupon she made a banquet of her suffering offspring.[F]
Adversity works a stupendous change in tender youth; many a young man is never recognized by his parents after having been in hot water.
"It is a waste of valour for us to do battle," said a lame ostrich to a negro who had suddenly come upon her in the desert; "let us cast lots to see who shall be considered the victor, and then go about our business."
To this proposition the negro readily assented. They cast lots: the negro cast lots of stones, and the ostrich cast lots of feathers. Then the former went about his business, which consisted of skinning the bird.
MORAL.—There is nothing like the arbitrament of chance. That form of it known astrile-bi-joorieis perhaps as good as any.
An author who had wrought a book of fables (the merit whereof transcended expression) was peacefully sleeping atop of the modest eminence to which he had attained, when he was rudely awakened by a throng of critics, emitting adverse judgment upon the tales he had builded.