p a little lacquered box full of boiled rice and snails for his
journey, wrapped it around with a silk napkin, and, putting his extra
clothes in a bundle, swung it on his back. Tying it over his neck, he
seized his staff and was ready to go.

"_Sayonara_" ("Good-bye") cried he, as, with a tear in his eye, he walked
away.

"_Sayonara. Oshidzukani_" ("Good-bye. Walk slowly"), croaked Mrs. Frog
and the whole family of young frogs in a chorus.

Two of the froggies were still babies, that is, they were yet polywogs,
with a half inch of tail still on them; and, of course, were carried
about by being strapped on the back of their older brothers.

Mr. Frog being now on land, out of his well, noticed that the other
animals did not leap, but walked on their legs. And, not wishing to be
eccentric, he likewise began briskly walking upright on his hind legs or
waddling on all fours.

Now it happened that about the same time the Ozaka father frog had become
restless and dissatisfied with life on the edges of his lotus-ditch. He
had made up his mind to "cast the lion's cub into the valley."

"Why! that _is_ tall talk for a frog, I must say," exclaims the reader.
"What did he mean?"

I must tell you that the Ozaka frog was a philosopher. Right at the edge
of his lotus-pond was a monastery, full of Buddhist monks, who every day
studied their sacred rolls and droned over the books of Confucius, to
learn them by heart. Our frog had heard them so often that he could (in
frog language, of course) repeat many of their wise sentences and intone
responses to their evening prayers put up by the great idol Amida.
Indeed, our frog had so often listened to their debates on texts from the
classics that he had himself become a sage and a philosopher. Yet, as
the proverb says, "the sage is not happy."

Why not? In spite of a soft mud-bank, plenty of green scum, stagnant
water, and shady lotus leaves, a fat wife and a numerous family; in
short, everything to make a frog happy, his forehead, or rather gullet,
was wrinkled with care from long pondering of knotty problems, such as
the following:

The monks often come down to the edge of the pond to look at the pink and
white lotus. One summer day, as a little frog, hardly out of his tadpole
state, with a small fragment of tail still left, sat basking on a huge
round leaf, one monk said to the other:

"Of what does that remind you?"

"The babies of frogs will become but frogs," said one shave