t I was a mere
learner; nevertheless, I could understand the main drift of all that
they said; and what was equally gratifying to me, I could express to
them almost anything expressible in English, and they understood me.

My life now became a very happy one; I became sincerely attached to my
captor and to his family, and was charmed with their good sense and
their kind feeling. I flatter myself also that they, in their turn, were
not only proud of their Batrachian, but grew fond of him. They showed me
more and more attention, gave me a seat at their table, and furnished me
with clothes of their own fashion. I must confess, however, that the
openings on the sides for their mouths, and on the back for their wings,
were rather troublesome to me, and occasioned me several severe colds,
until I taught them to make my vesture close about my chest.

When visitors came to their house I was always invited to bring out my
organ and converse with them. Strangers found some difficulty in
understanding me; but with the family I conversed with perfect ease, and
they interpreted for me. I found that the universal theory concerning me
was, that I came from beyond a range of mountains on the nearest
continent, beyond which no explorations had ever been made. Concerning
my mode of crossing the steep and lofty barrier on the continent, and
the deep, wide strait which separated the island from the mainland, they
speculated in vain. I humored this theory at first, as far as I could
without positive statements of falsehood, for I knew that, if I told the
truth, it would be absolutely incredible to them; and I did not reveal
to my Martial friends my own terrestrial, to them celestial character,
until just before my departure.

But my psychical character perplexed them much more than my zooelogical.
It seems that these islanders had been accustomed to call themselves, in
their own tongue, "rational animals with sentiments of justice and
piety,"--all which, be it remembered, is expressed in their wonderful
language by a simple harmonic progression of four full chords.[B] But
here was a Batrachian,--one of the lower orders of creation, in their
view,--from whom the Almighty had withheld the gift of a rational soul,
who nevertheless appeared to reason as soundly as they,--to understand
all their ideas,--not only repeating their sentences on his bamboo
pipes, but commenting intelligently on them; and who not only gave these
proofs of an underst