ous to make the test himself and get at the straight truth. The
elephant sent them one at a time.
First, the cow. She found nothing in the hole but a cow.
The tiger found nothing in it but a tiger.
The lion found nothing in it but a lion.
The leopard found nothing in it but a leopard.
The camel found a camel, and nothing more.
Then Hathi was wroth, and said he would have the truth, if he had to go
and fetch it himself. When he returned, he abused his whole subjectry
for liars, and was in an unappeasable fury with the moral and mental
blindness of the cat. He said that anybody but a near-sighted fool could
see that there was nothing in the hole but an elephant.
MORAL, BY THE CAT
You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it
and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they
will be there.
HUNTING THE DECEITFUL TURKEY
When I was a boy my uncle and his big boys hunted with the rifle, the
youngest boy Fred and I with a shotgun--a small single-barrelled shotgun
which was properly suited to our size and strength; it was not much
heavier than a broom. We carried it turn about, half an hour at a time.
I was not able to hit anything with it, but I liked to try. Fred and
I hunted feathered small game, the others hunted deer, squirrels, wild
turkeys, and such things. My uncle and the big boys were good shots.
They killed hawks and wild geese and such like on the wing; and they
didn't wound or kill squirrels, they stunned them. When the dogs treed
a squirrel, the squirrel would scamper aloft and run out on a limb
and flatten himself along it, hoping to make himself invisible in
that way--and not quite succeeding. You could see his wee little ears
sticking up. You couldn't see his nose, but you knew where it was. Then
the hunter, despising a "rest" for his rifle, stood up and took
offhand aim at the limb and sent a bullet into it immediately under
the squirrel's nose, and down tumbled the animal, unwounded, but
unconscious; the dogs gave him a shake and he was dead. Sometimes when
the distance was great and the wind not accurately allowed for, the
bullet would hit the squirrel's head; the dogs could do as they pleased
with that one--the hunter's pride was hurt, and he wouldn't allow it to
go into the gamebag.
In the first faint gray of the dawn the stately wild turkeys would be
stalking around in great flocks, and ready to be
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