Cobwebs from an Empty Skull Part 19

CXI.

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!"

CXII.

"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'd like 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.

CXIII.

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 promise _that_; 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."

CXIV.

"Oyster at home?" inquired a monkey, rapping at the closed sh.e.l.l.

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 hea.r.s.e 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.

CXV.

"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 'cla.s.sical allusion,'" said the spider to the fly.

CXVI.

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 embarra.s.s any bear that ever bore. I can remain pa.s.sive, and starve; or I can devour my s.h.i.+p, 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.

CXVII.