l
speech, with the ingenuity of the final inquiry, and with the bear's
paw. It was the paw, however, which made the most lasting impression.

Always give ear to the flattery of your powerful inferiors: it will
cheer you in your decline.

LXII.

A philosopher looking up from the pages of the Zend-Avesta, upon which
he had been centring his soul, beheld a pig violently assailing a
cauldron of cold slops.

"Heaven bless us!" said the sage; "for unalloyed delight give me a
good honest article of Sensuality. So soon as my 'Essay upon the
Correlation of Mind-forces' shall have brought me fame and fortune, I
hope to abjure the higher faculties, devoting the remainder of my life
to the cultivation of the propensities."

"Allah be praised!" soliloquized the pig, "there is nothing so godlike
as Intellect, and nothing so ecstatic as intellectual pursuits. I must
hasten to perform this gross material function, that I may retire to
my wallow and resign my soul to philosophical meditation."

This tale has one moral if you are a philosopher, and another if you
are a pig.

LXIII.

"Awful dark--isn't it?" said an owl, one night, looking in upon the
roosting hens in a poultry-house; "don't see how I am to find my way
back to my hollow tree."

"There is no necessity," replied the cock; "you can roost there,
alongside the door, and go home in the morning."

"Thanks!" said the owl, chuckling at the fool's simplicity; and,
having plenty of time to indulge his facetious humour, he gravely
installed himself upon the perch indicated, and shutting his eyes,
counterfeited a profound slumber. He was aroused soon after by a sharp
constriction of the throat.

"I omitted to tell you," said the cock, "that the seat you happen by
the merest chance to occupy is a contested one, and has been fruitful
of hens to this vexatious weasel. I don't know _how_ often I have been
partially widowed by the sneaking villain."

For obvious reasons there was no audible reply.

This narrative is intended to teach the folly--the worse than sin!--of
trumping your partner's ace.

LXIV.

A fat cow who saw herself detected by an approaching horse while
perpetrating stiff and ungainly gambols in the spring sunshine,
suddenly assumed a severe gravity of gait, and a sedate solemnity of
expression that would have been creditable to a Brahmin.

"Fine morning!" said the horse, who, fired by her example, was
curvetting lithely and toss