Presently the tuneful sounds drew near, whereupon she began to fidget; ending by shinning up a tree, just as the dogs burst into view below her, and stifled their songs upon the body of their victim before her eyes—which protruded.
"There is an indefinable charm," said she—"a subtle and tender spell—a mystery—a conundrum, as it were—in the sounds of an unseen orchestra. This is quite lost when the performers are visible to the audience. Distant music (if any) for your obedient servant!"
LXXVII.
Having been taught to turn his scraps of bad Persian into choice Latin, a parrot was puffed up with conceit.
"Observe," said he, "the superiority I may boast by virtue of my classical education: I can chatter flat nonsense in the language of Cicero."
"I would advise you," said his master, quietly, "to let it be of a different character from that chattered by some of Mr. Cicero's most admired compatriots, if you value the priviledge of hanging at that public window. 'Commit no mythology,' please."
The exquisite fancies of a remote age may not be imitated in this; not, perhaps, from a lack of talent, so much as from a fear of arrest.
LXXVIII.
A rat, finding a file, smelt it all over, bit it gently, and observed that, as it did not seem to be rich enough to produce dyspepsia, he would venture to make a meal of it. So he gnawed it into smithareens [[D]] without the slightest injury to his teeth. With his morals the case was somewhat different. For the file was a file of newspapers, and his system became so saturated with the "spirit of the Press" that he went off and called his aged father a "lingering contemporary;" advised the correction of brief tails by amputation; lauded the skill of a quack rodentist for money; and, upon what would otherwise have been his death-bed, essayed a lie of such phenomenal magnitude that it stuck in his throat, and prevented him breathing his last. All this crime, and misery, and other nonsense, because he was too lazy to worry about and find a file of nutritious fables.