Cobwebs from an Empty Skull Part 13

"It won't do--it won't do!" replied the bear, with a mournful shake of the head, "it's not the orthodox thing. Inaction may do for professors, collectors, and others connected with the ornamental part of the n.o.ble science; but for _us_, we must keep moving, or zoology would soon revert to the crude guesses and mistaken theories of the azoic period. And yet," continued the beast, after the keeper had gone, "there is something novel and ingenious in what the underling suggests. I must remember that; and when I have leisure, give it a trial."

It was noted next day that the n.o.ble science had lost an active apostle, and gained a pa.s.sive disciple.

LXXIV.

A hen who had hatched out a quant.i.ty of ducklings, was somewhat surprised one day to see them take to the water, and sail away out of her jurisdiction. The more she thought of this the more unreasonable such conduct appeared, and the more indignant she became. She resolved that it must cease forthwith. So she soon afterward convened her brood, and conducted them to the margin of a hot pool, having a business connection with the boiling spring of Doo-sno-swair. They straightway launched themselves for a cruise--returning immediately to the land, as if they had forgotten their ship's papers.

When Callow Youth exhibits an eccentric tendency, give it him hot.

LXXV.

"Did it ever occur to you that this manner of thing is extremely unpleasant?" asked a writhing worm of the angler who had impaled him upon a hook. "Such treatment by those who boast themselves our brothers is, possibly, fraternal--but it hurts."

"I confess," replied the idler, "that our usages with regard to vermin and reptiles might be so amended as to be more temperately diabolical; but please to remember that the gentle agonies with which we afflict _you_ are wholesome and exhilarating compared with the ills we ladle out to one another. During the reign of His Pellucid Refulgence, Khatchoo Khan," he continued, absently dropping his wriggling auditor into the brook, "no less than three hundred thousand Persian subjects were put to death, in a pleasing variety of ingenious ways, for their religious beliefs."

"What that has to do with your treatment of _us_" interrupted a fish, who, having bitten at the worm just then, was drawn into the conversation, "I am quite unable to see."

"That," said the angler, disengaging him, "is because you have the hook through your eyeball, my edible friend."

Many a truth is spoken in jest; but at least ten times as many falsehoods are uttered in dead earnest.

LXXVI.

A wild cat was listening with rapt approval to the melody of distant hounds tracking a remote fox.

"Excellent! _bravo!_" she exclaimed at intervals. "I could sit and listen all day to the like of that. I am pa.s.sionately fond of music.

_Ong-core!_"

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"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!"

LXXVII.

Having been taught to turn his sc.r.a.ps 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 cla.s.sical 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.

LXXVIII.

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 into _smithareens_[A] 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 magnitude that 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.

[Footnote A: I confess my inability to translate this word: it may mean "flinders."--TRANSLATOR.]

LXXIX.

"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 a.s.sent.

So she started up, and finding she could grow faster than he, she wound round and round him until she had pa.s.sed 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.

Lx.x.x.

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 theirselves _to_ theirselves--no saurians need 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."