Cobwebs from an Empty Skull

C.

A volcano, having discharged a few million tons of stones upon a small village, asked the mayor if he thought that a tolerably good supply for building purposes.

'I think,' replied that functionary, 'if you give us another dash of granite, and just a pinch of old red sandstone, we could manage with what you have already done for us. We would, however, be grateful for the loan of your crater to bake bricks.'

'Oh, certainly; parties served at their residences.' Then, after the man had gone, the mountain added, with mingled lava and contempt: 'The most insatiable people I ever contracted to supply. They shall not have another pebble!'

He banked his fires, and in six weeks was as cold as a neglected pudding. Then might you have seen the heaving of the surface boulders, as the people began stirring forty fathoms beneath.

When you have got quite enough of anything, make it manifest by asking for some more. You won't get it.

CI.

'I entertain for you a sentiment of profound amity,' said the tiger to the leopard. 'And why should I not? for are we not members of the same great feline family?'

'True,' replied the leopard, who was engaged in the hopeless endeavour to change his spots; 'since we have mutually plundered one another's hunting grounds of everything edible, there remains no grievance to quarrel about. You are a good fellow; let us embrace!'

They did so with the utmost heartiness; which being observed by a contiguous monkey, that animal got up a tree, where he delivered himself of the wisdom following:

'There is nothing so touching as these expressions of mutual regard between animals who are vulgarly believed to hate one another. They render the brief intervals of peace almost endurable to both parties. But the difficulty is, there are so many excellent reasons why these relatives should live in peace, that they won't have time to state them all before the next fight.'

CII.

A woodpecker, who had bored a multitude of holes in the body of a dead tree, was asked by a robin to explain their purpose.

'As yet, in the infancy of science,' replied the woodpecker, 'I am quite unable to do so. Some naturalists affirm that I hide acorns in these pits; others maintain that I get worms out of them. I endeavoured for some time to reconcile the two theories; but the worms ate my acorns, and then would not come out. Since then, I have left science to work out its own problems, while I work out the holes. I hope the final decision may be in some way advantageous to me; for at my nest I have a number of prepared holes which I can hammer into some suitable tree at a moment's notice. Perhaps I could insert a few into the scientific head.'

'No-o-o,' said the robin, reflectively, 'I should think not. A prepared hole is an idea; I don't think it could get in.'

MORAL.-It might be driven in with a steam-hammer.

CIII.

'Are you going to this great hop?' inquired a spruce cricket of a labouring beetle.

'No,' replied he, sadly, 'I've got to attend this great ball.'

'Blest if I know the difference,' drawled a more offensive insect, with his head in an empty silk hat; 'and I've been in society all my life. But why was I not invited to either hop or ball?'

He is now invited to the latter.

CIV.

'Too bad, too bad,' said a young Abyssinian to a yawning hippopotamus.

'What is 'too bad?'' inquired the quadruped. 'What is the matter with you?'

'Oh, I never complain,' was the reply; 'I was only thinking of the niggard economy of Nature in building a great big beast like you and not giving him any mouth.'

'H'm, h'm! it was still worse,' mused the beast, 'to construct a great wit like you and give him no seasonable occasion for the display of his cleverness.'

A moment later there were a cracking of bitten bones, a great gush of animal fluids, the vanishing of two black feet-in short, the fatal poisoning of an indiscreet hippopotamus.

The rubbing of a bit of lemon about the beaker's brim is the finishing-touch to a whiskey punch. Much misery may be thus averted.

CV.

A salmon vainly attempted to leap up a cascade. After trying a few thousand times, he grew so fatigued that he began to leap less and think more. Suddenly an obvious method of surmounting the difficulty presented itself to the salmonic intelligence.

'Strange,' he soliloquized, as well as he could in the water,-'very strange I did not think of it before! I'll go above the fall and leap downwards.'

So he went out on the bank, walked round to the upper side of the fall, and found he could leap over quite easily. Ever afterwards when he went up-stream in the spring to be caught, he adopted this plan. He has been heard to remark that the price of salmon might be brought down to a merely nominal figure, if so many would not wear themselves out before getting up to where there is good fishing.

CVI.

'The son of a jackass,' shrieked a haughty mare to a mule who had offended her by expressing an opinion, 'should cultivate the simple grace of intellectual humility.'

'It is true,' was the meek reply, 'I cannot boast an illustrious ancestry; but at least I shall never be called upon to blush for my posterity. Yonder mule colt is as proper a son-'

'Yonder mule colt?' interrupted the mare, with a look of ineffable contempt for her auditor; 'that is my colt!'