"
No sooner was the splice effected, than an astronomer passing that way
casually remarked to a friend that he had just sighted a comet.
Supposing itself menaced, the timorous member again sprang away,
coming down plump before the horny nose of a sparrow. Here its career
terminated.
We sometimes escape from an imaginary danger, only to find some real
persecutor has a little bill against us.
CXXXIV.
A jackal who had pursued a deer all day with unflagging industry, was
about to seize him, when an earthquake, which was doing a little civil
engineering in that part of the country, opened a broad chasm between
him and his prey.
"Now, here," said he, "is a distinct interference with the laws of
nature. But if we are to tolerate miracles, there is an end of all
progress."
So speaking, he endeavoured to cross the abyss at two jumps. His fate
would serve the purpose of an impressive warning if it might be
clearly ascertained; but the earth having immediately pinched together
again, the research of the moral investigator is baffled.
CXXXV.
"Ah!" sighed a three-legged stool, "if I had only been a quadruped, I
should have been happy as the day is long--which, on the twenty-first
of June, would be considerable felicity for a stool.
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