"If you
are going to stand upon ceremony, everything will get cold. Besides, I
have dined. I wish, by-the-way, you would put on some more fuel; I
think we shall have snow."
"Yes," said the man, "the weather is like yourself--raw, and
exasperatingly cool. Perhaps this will warm you." And he rolled a
ponderous pine log atop of that provoking reptile, who flattened out,
and "handed in his checks."
The moral thus doth glibly run--
A cause its opposite may brew;
The sun-shade is unlike the sun,
The plum unlike the plumber, too.
A salamander underdone
His impudence may overdo.
CXXVII.
A humming-bird invited a vulture to dine with her. He accepted, but
took the precaution to have an emetic along with him; and immediately
after dinner, which consisted mainly of dew, spices, honey, and
similar slops, he swallowed his corrective, and tumbled the
distasteful viands out. He then went away, and made a good wholesome
meal with his friend the ghoul. He has been heard to remark, that the
taste for humming-bird fare is "too artificial for _him_." He says, a
simple and natural diet, with agreeable companions, cheerful
surroundings, and a struggling moon, is best for the health, and most
agreeable to the normal palate.
People with vitiated tastes may derive much profit from this opinion.
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