"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.
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