nextricable as
the gored lion's bite."

But ever after that Passage in the life of Fro, his were, on the whole,
years of peace. Every season seemed to strengthen his sagacity, and to
unfold his wonderful instincts. Most assuredly he knew all the simpler
parts of speech--all the household words in the Scottish language. He
was, in all our pastimes, as much one of ourselves, as if, instead of
being a Pagan with four feet, he had been a Christian with two. As for
temper, we trace the sweetness of our own to his; an angry word from one
he loved, he forgot in half a minute, offering his lion-like paw; yet
there were particular people he could not abide, nor from their hands
would he have accepted a roast potato out of the dripping-pan, and in
this he resembled his master. He knew the Sabbath-day as well as the
sexton--and never was known to bark till the Monday morning when the
cock crew; and then he would give a long musical yowl, as if his breast
were relieved from silence. If ever, in this cold, changeful, inconstant
world, there was a friendship that might be called sincere, it was that
which, half a century ago and upwards, subsisted between Christopher
North and John Fro. We never had a quarrel in all our lives--and within
these two months we made a pilgrimage to his grave. He was buried--not
by our hands, but by the hands of one whose tender and manly heart loved
the old, blind, deaf, staggering creature to the very last--for such in
his fourteenth year he truly was--a sad and sorry sight to see, to them
who remembered 'the glory of his stately and majestic years. One day he
crawled with a moan-like whine to our brother's feet, and expired.
Reader, young, bright, and beautiful though thou be--remember all flesh
is dust!

This is an episode--a tale, in itself complete, yet growing out of, and
appertaining to, the main plot of Epic or Article. You will recollect we
were speaking of ducks, teals, and widgeons; and we come now to the next
clause of the verse--wild geese and swans.

Some people's geese are all swans; but so far from that being the case
with ours--sad and sorry are we to say it--now all our swans are geese.
But in our buoyant boyhood, all God's creatures were to our eyes just as
God made them; and there was ever--especially birds--a tinge of beauty
over them all. What an inconceivable difference--distance--to the
imagination, between the nature of a tame and a wild goose! Aloft in
heaven, themselves in n