o slander your dead relations."

Whereat there was confusion in the demeanour of that feathered trio.

CIX.

"The Millennium is come," said a lion to a lamb. "Suppose you come out
of that fold, and let us lie down together, as it has been foretold we
should."

"Been to dinner to-day?" inquired the lamb.

"Not a bite of anything since breakfast," was the reply, "except a few
lean swine, a saddle or two, and some old harness."

"I distrust a Millennium," continued the lamb, thoughtfully, "which
consists _solely_ in our lying down together. My notion of that happy
time is that it is a period in which pork and leather are not articles
of diet, but in which every respectable lion shall have as much mutton
as he can consume. However, you may go over to yonder sunny hill and
lie down until I come."

It is singular how a feeling of security tends to develop cunning. If
that lamb had been out upon the open plain he would have readily
fallen into the snare--and it was studded very thickly with teeth.

CX.

"I say, you!" bawled a fat ox in a stall to a lusty young ass who was
braying outside; "the like of that is not in good taste!"

"In whose good taste, my adipose censor?" inquired the ass, not too
respectfully.

"Why--h'm--ah! I mean it does not suit _me_. You ought to bellow."

"May I inquire how it happens to be any of your business whether I
bellow or bray, or do both--or neither?"

"I cannot tell you," answered the critic, shaking his head
despondingly; "I do not at all understand it. I can only say that I
have been accustomed to censure all discourse that differs from my
own."

"Exactly," said the ass; "you have sought to make an art of
impertinence by mistaking preferences for principles. In 'taste' you
have invented a word incapable of definition, to denote an idea
impossible of expression; and by employing in connection therewith the
words 'good' and 'bad,' you indicate a merely subjective process in
terms of an objective quality. Such presumption transcends the limit
of the merely impudent, and passes into the boundless empyrean of pure
cheek!"

At the close of this remarkable harangue, the bovine critic was at a
loss for language to express his disapproval. So he said the speech
was in bad taste.

CXI.

A bloated toad, studded with dermal excrescences, was boasting that
she was the wartiest creature alive.

"Perhaps you are," said her auditor, emerging from the soil; "b