o be about
the same kind of idiot that you were before."

An Invitation

A Pious Person who had overcharged his paunch with dead bird by way of
attesting his gratitude for escaping the many calamities which Heaven had
sent upon others, fell asleep at table and dreamed. He thought he lived
in a country where turkeys were the ruling class, and every year they
held a feast to manifest their sense of Heaven's goodness in sparing
their lives to kill them later. One day, about a week before one of
these feasts, he met the Supreme Gobbler, who said:

"You will please get yourself into good condition for the Thanksgiving
dinner."

"Yes, your Excellency," replied the Pious Person, delighted, "I shall
come hungry, I assure you. It is no small privilege to dine with your
Excellency."

The Supreme Gobbler eyed him for a moment in silence; then he said:

"As one of the lower domestic animals, you cannot be expected to know
much, but you might know something. Since you do not, you will permit me
to point out that being asked to dinner is one thing; being asked to dine
is another and a different thing."

With this significant remark the Supreme Gobbler left him, and
thenceforward the Pious Person dreamed of himself as white meat and dark
until rudely awakened by decapitation.

The Ashes of Madame Blavatsky

The two brightest lights of Theosophy being in the same place at once in
company with the Ashes of Madame Blavatsky, an Inquiring Soul thought the
time propitious to learn something worth while. So he sat at the feet of
one awhile, and then he sat awhile at the feet of the other, and at last
he applied his ear to the keyhole of the casket containing the Ashes of
Madame Blavatsky. When the Inquiring Soul had completed his course of
instruction he declared himself the Ahkoond of Swat, fell into the
baleful habit of standing on his head, and swore that the mother who bore
him was a pragmatic paralogism. Wherefore he was held in high reverence,
and when the two other gentlemen were hanged for lying the Theosophists
elected him to the leadership of their Disastral Body, and after a quiet
life and an honourable death by the kick of a jackass he was reincarnated
as a Yellow Dog. As such he ate the Ashes of Madame Blavatsky, and
Theosophy was no more.

The Opossum of the Future

One day an Opossum who had gone to sleep hanging from the highest branch
of a tree by the tail, awoke and saw a large