was listening with rapt approval to the melody of distant
hounds tracking a remote fox.

"Excellent! _bravo!_" she exclaimed at intervals. "I could sit and
listen all day to the like of that. I am passionately fond of music.
_Ong-core!_"

Presently the tuneful sounds drew near, whereupon she began to fidget;
ending by shinning up a tree, just as the dogs burst into view below
her, and stifled their songs upon the body of their victim before her
eyes--which protruded.

[Illustration]

"There is an indefinable charm," said she--"a subtle and tender
spell--a mystery--a conundrum, as it were--in the sounds of an unseen
orchestra. This is quite lost when the performers are visible to the
audience. Distant music (if any) for your obedient servant!"

LXXVII.

Having been taught to turn his scraps of bad Persian into choice
Latin, a parrot was puffed up with conceit.

"Observe," said he, "the superiority I may boast by virtue of my
classical education: I can chatter flat nonsense in the language of
Cicero."

"I would advise you," said his master, quietly, "to let it be of a
different character from that chattered by some of Mr. Cicero's most
admired compatriots, if you value the priviledge of hanging at that
public window. 'Commit no mythology,' please."

The exquisite fancies of a remote age may not be imitated in this;
not, perhaps, from a lack of talent, so much as from a fear of arrest.

LXXVIII.

A rat, finding a file, smelt it all over, bit it gently, and observed
that, as it did not seem to be rich enough to produce dyspepsia, he
would venture to make a meal of it. So he gnawed it into
_smithareens_[A] without the slightest injury to his teeth. With his
morals the case was somewhat different. For the file was a file of
newspapers, and his system became so saturated with the "spirit of the
Press" that he went off and called his aged father a "lingering
contemporary;" advised the correction of brief tails by amputation;
lauded the skill of a quack rodentist for money; and, upon what would
otherwise have been his death-bed, essayed a lie of such phenomenal
magnitude that it stuck in his throat, and prevented him breathing
his last. All this crime, and misery, and other nonsense, because he
was too lazy to worry about and find a file of nutritious fables.

This tale shows the folly of eating everything you happen to fancy.
Consider, moreover, the danger of such a course to your neighbour's
wi