Part 16 (1/2)

A certain magician owned a learned pig, who had lived a cleanly gentlemanly life, achieving great fame, and winning the hearts of all the people. But perceiving he was not happy, the magician, by a process easily explained did s.p.a.ce permit, transformed him into a man.

Straightway the creature abandoned his cards, his timepiece, his musical instruments, and all other devices of his profession, and betook him to a pool of mud, wherein he inhumed himself to the tip of his nose.

”Ten minutes ago,” said the magician reprovingly, ”you would have scorned to do an act like that.”

”True,” replied the biped, with a contented grunt; ”I was then a learned pig; I am now a learned man.”

XCIV.

”Nature has been very kind to her creatures,” said a giraffe to an elephant. ”For example, your neck being so very short, she has given you a proboscis wherewith to reach your food; and I having no proboscis, she has bestowed upon 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 a.s.sented, ”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 wors.h.i.+p; 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.