n me a long neck."

"I think, my good friend, you have been among the theologians," said
the elephant. "I doubt if I am clever enough to argue with you. I can
only say it does not strike me that way."

"But, really," persisted the giraffe, "you must confess your trunk is
a great convenience, in that it enables you to reach the high branches
of which you are so fond, even as my long neck enables me."

"Perhaps," mused the ungrateful pachyderm, "if we could not reach the
higher branches, we should develop a taste for the lower ones."

"In any case," was the rejoinder, "we can never be sufficiently
thankful that we are unlike the lowly hippopotamus, who can reach
neither the one nor the other."

"Ah! yes," the elephant assented, "there does not seem to have been
enough of Nature's kindness to go round."

"But the hippopotamus has his roots and his rushes."

"It is not easy to see how, with his present appliances, he could
obtain anything else."

This fable teaches nothing; for those who perceive the meaning of it
either knew it before, or will not be taught.

XCV.

A pious heathen who was currying favour with his wooden deity by
sitting for some years motionless in a treeless plain, observed a
young ivy putting forth her tender shoots at his feet. He thought he
could endure the additional martyrdom of a little shade, and begged
her to make herself quite at home.

"Exactly," said the plant; "it is my mission to adorn venerable
ruins."

She lapped her clinging tendrils about his wasted shanks, and in six
months had mantled him in green.

"It is now time," said the devotee, a year later, "for me to fulfil
the remainder of my religious vow. I must put in a few seasons of
howling and leaping. You have been very good, but I no longer require
your gentle ministrations."

"But I require yours," replied the vine; "you have become a second
nature to me. Let others indulge in the delights of gymnastic worship;
you and I will 'surfer and be strong'--respectively."

The devotee muttered something about the division of labour, and his
bones are still pointed out to the pilgrim.

XCVI.

A fox seeing a swan afloat, called out:

"What ship is that? I wish to take passage by your line."

"Got a ticket?" inquired the fowl.

"No; I'll make it all right with the company, though."

So the swan moored alongside, and he embarked,--deck passage. When
they were well off shore the fox intimated that dinner