At last his patience was
exhausted, and he appealed to Bruin himself, accusing him of breaking
faith, and calling him a quack.
"Why, you insolent marsupial!" retorted the bear in a rage; "you
expect my oil to give you hair upon your tail, when it will not give
me even a tail. Why don't you try under-draining, or top-dressing with
light compost?"
They said and did a good deal more before the opossum withdrew his
cold and barren member from consideration; but the judicious fabulist
does not encumber his tale with extraneous matter, lest it be
pointless.
CXXII.
"So disreputable a lot as you are I never saw!" said a sleepy rat to
the casks in a wine-cellar. "Always making night hideous with your
hoops and hollows, and disfiguring the day with your bunged-up
appearance. There is no sleeping when once the wine has got into your
heads. I'll report you to the butler!"
"The sneaking tale-bearer," said the casks. "Let us beat him with our
staves."
"_Requiescat in pace_," muttered a learned cobweb, sententiously.
"Requires a cat in the place, does it?" shrieked the rat. "Then I'm
off!"
To explain all the wisdom imparted by this fable would require the pen
of a pig, and volumes of smoke.
CXXIII.
A giraffe having trodden upon the tail of a poodle, that animal flew
into a blind rage, and wrestled valorously with the invading foot.
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