you will not wait for me," was the yawning reply. "If you
are going to stand upon ceremony, everything will get cold. Besides, I
have dined. I wish, by-the-way, you would put on some more fuel; I
think we shall have snow."

"Yes," said the man, "the weather is like yourself--raw, and
exasperatingly cool. Perhaps this will warm you." And he rolled a
ponderous pine log atop of that provoking reptile, who flattened out,
and "handed in his checks."

The moral thus doth glibly run--
A cause its opposite may brew;
The sun-shade is unlike the sun,
The plum unlike the plumber, too.
A salamander underdone
His impudence may overdo.

CXXVII.

A humming-bird invited a vulture to dine with her. He accepted, but
took the precaution to have an emetic along with him; and immediately
after dinner, which consisted mainly of dew, spices, honey, and
similar slops, he swallowed his corrective, and tumbled the
distasteful viands out. He then went away, and made a good wholesome
meal with his friend the ghoul. He has been heard to remark, that the
taste for humming-bird fare is "too artificial for _him_." He says, a
simple and natural diet, with agreeable companions, cheerful
surroundings, and a struggling moon, is best for the health, and most
agreeable to the normal palate.

People with vitiated tastes may derive much profit from this opinion.
_Crede experto._

CXXVIII.

A certain terrier, of a dogmatic turn, asked a kitten her opinion of
rats, demanding a categorical answer. The opinion, as given, did not
possess the merit of coinciding with his own; whereupon he fell upon
the heretic and bit her--bit her until his teeth were much worn and
her body much elongated--bit her good! Having thus vindicated the
correctness of his own view, he felt so amiable a satisfaction that he
announced his willingness to adopt the opinion of which he had
demonstrated the harmlessness. So he begged his enfeebled antagonist
to re-state it, which she incautiously did. No sooner, however, had
the superior debater heard it for the second time than he resumed his
intolerance, and made an end of that unhappy cat.

"Heresy," said he, wiping his mouth, "may be endured in the vigorous
and lusty; but in a person lying at the very point of death such
hardihood is intolerable."

It is always intolerable.

CXXIX.

A tortoise and an armadillo quarrelled, and agreed to fight it out.
Repairing to a secluded valley