rawstack!

The camel started to eat the straw, but the merchant jumped down and
belabored the beast over the head with a marlin pin--whatever that
is--and cried: "Cease, thou gluttonous, stupid beast; knowest thou not
that thou wilt impale thy parched throat?"

"Why belaborest thou the camel?" asked Gud, solicitously.

"Because, there is a needle in this strawstack, and I came from the four
corners of the earth to find it. Do you think I am going to let this
fool beast devour it?"

So Gud offered to hold the camel's halter while the rich merchant
searched the strawstack for the needle.

After the merchant had looked in all the straws but one he gave up in
despair, for he had not found the needle.

"Perseverance, dear, my lord, keeps honor bright," quoth Gud.

Greatly encouraged, the rich merchant looked into the last straw and
found the needle. In glee he shouted and held up the needle in one hand
and the last straw in the other.

"I perceive," said Gud, "that you are a prince of industry. But you are
also in a dilemma. If you try the last straw first and break the camel's
back, then how can the poor beast go through the eye of the needle?"

Chapter XXI

"Who was that fellow," asked Fidu, "who passed me just now with such a
wild, wild look in his eye?"

"That fellow," replied Gud, "was an author who just spent a week-end
with me."

"And what did you do to him?" asked Fidu. "He was as crazy as the
nebular hypothesis."

"Upon his request I criticized his book, which he insisted on reading to
me."

"But what did you say about it?" demanded Fidu, "he looked as locoed as
a lop-eared logarithm."

"I made several criticisms. I told him that his plot was choppy, and
that most of it was stale; that the work lacked sadly in originality and
there was considerable repetition. I said it was very melodramatic in
spots and that it had entirely too many murders, and that many of the
biggest murderers seemed to escape without punishment. I also told him
that it was full of sordid realism and most unhappy endings, that it was
overloaded with action, and worst of all, it utterly lacked any evidence
of a distinct moral purpose."

"Well no wonder," said Fidu, "that the poor fellow was raving; you made,
if I may say so, quite a severe criticism."

"I grant that, but his book deserved it--everything I said about it was
absolutely true."

"What did he call his book?" asked Fidu.

"He called it," replied Gud, "