CXXXI.
A young eel inhabiting the mouth of a river in India, determined to
travel. Being a fresh-water eel, he was somewhat restricted in his
choice of a route, but he set out with a cheerful heart and very
little luggage. Before he had proceeded very far up-stream he found
the current too strong to be overcome without a ruinous consumption of
coals. He decided to anchor his tail where it then was, and _grow_ up.
For the first hundred miles it was tolerably tedious work, but when he
had learned to tame his impatience, he found this method of progress
rather pleasant than otherwise. But when he began to be caught at
widely separate points by the fishermen of eight or ten different
nations, he did not think it so fine.
This fable teaches that when you extend your residence you multiply
your experiences. A local eel can know but little of angling.
CXXXII.
Some of the lower animals held a convention to settle for ever the
unspeakably important question, What is Life?
"Life," squeaked the poet, blinking and folding his filmy wings,
"is--." His kind having been already very numerously heard from upon
the subject, he was choked off.
"Life," said the scientist, in a voice smothered by the earth he was
throwing up into small hills, "is the harmonious action of
heterogeneous but related faculties, operating in accordance with
certain natural laws.
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