He looked again, and found it was
His sister's husband's niece,'

"Now it seems to me that another extract from the same work would
have lent itself better to your requirements:

"'He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek;
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
"The one thing I regret," he said,
"Is that I cannot speak!"'"

I very much regret that it--the snake--cannot speak, for were it
gifted with articulate power your representative could hold a _viva
voce_ interview with his snakeship, and therefore become
enlightened as to the real facts of the case. The reptile might
also disclose the locality he hails from, as that important point
is still shrouded in mystery.

"As soon as I had read your article, which deals somewhat
frivolously with a very serious subject, I went forth to the Zoo in
quest of Mr. Bartlett, but that gentleman had left town. Perhaps
the article in question had something to do with his departure. Why
I sought to see him was to put to him the following questions to
test the accuracy of your statements:

"1. How comes it that you informed me on Saturday that the snake
was a foreigner, while according to the _Westminster Gazette_ it is
English?

"2. Did you not give it to me as your opinion that it must have
come in fruit? You are now made to say that it must have been
brought in plants or shrubs, and if that is so, why did the Park
gardeners declare that they had never seen anything like it before?

"3. Did you not say it was only a week old, and also that where it
came from there must be a number more?

"4. Did you not emphatically declare that you had no specimen of
the kind in the Gardens, and was it not for this reason I made you
a present of this one? How do you reconcile that with the following
passage in your interview with the representative of the
_Westminster Gazette_: 'As for its rarity, here is a fairly long
list of the specimens we have had, and we have several at present'?
And did you not give as a reason the reptile could not have strayed
from the Gardens the very cogent one that you had none of the kind
in your collection? And may I ask whether you really have any or
not? For if you have, and the one i