Cobwebs from an Empty Skull Part 18

The rubbing of a bit of lemon about the beaker's brim is the finis.h.i.+ng-touch to a whiskey punch. Much misery may be thus averted.

CV.

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 fis.h.i.+ng.

CVI.

"The son of a jacka.s.s," 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 is _my_ colt!"

"The consort of a jacka.s.s 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.

CVII.

"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.

CVIII.

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 remember my 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"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.

CIX.

"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 consists _solely_ in 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.

CX.

"I say, you!" bawled a fat ox in a stall to a l.u.s.ty young a.s.s who was braying outside; "the like of that is not in good taste!"

"In whose good taste, my adipose censor?" inquired the a.s.s, not too respectfully.

"Why--h'm--ah! I mean it does not suit _me_. 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 understand it. I can only say that I have been accustomed to censure all discourse that differs from my own."

"Exactly," said the a.s.s; "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 pa.s.ses 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.