Part 22 (2/2)

We sometimes escape from an imaginary danger, only to find some real persecutor has a little bill against us.

Cx.x.xIV.

A jackal who had pursued a deer all day with unflagging industry, was about to seize him, when an earthquake, which was doing a little civil engineering in that part of the country, opened a broad chasm between him and his prey.

”Now, here,” said he, ”is a distinct interference with the laws of nature. But if we are to tolerate miracles, there is an end of all progress.”

So speaking, he endeavoured to cross the abyss at two jumps. His fate would serve the purpose of an impressive warning if it might be clearly ascertained; but the earth having immediately pinched together again, the research of the moral investigator is baffled.

Cx.x.xV.

”Ah!” sighed a three-legged stool, ”if I had only been a quadruped, I should have been happy as the day is long--which, on the twenty-first of June, would be considerable felicity for a stool.”

”Ha! look at me!” said a toadstool; ”consider my superior privation, and be content with your comparatively happy lot.”

”I don't discern,” replied the first, ”how the contemplation of unipedal misery tends to alleviate tripedal wretchedness.”

”You don't, eh!” sneered the toadstool. ”You mean, do you, to fly in the face of all the moral and social philosophers?”

”Not unless some benefactor of his race shall impel me.”

”H'm! I think Zambri the Pa.r.s.ee is the man for that kindly office, my dear.”

This final fable teaches that he is.

BRIEF SEASONS OF INTELLECTUAL DISSIPATION.

I.

FOOL.--I have a question for you.

PHILOSOPHER.--I have a number of them for myself. Do you happen to have heard that a fool can ask more questions in a breath than a philosopher can answer in a life?

F.--I happen to have heard that in such a case the one is as great a fool as the other.

PH.--Then there is no distinction between folly and philosophy?

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