A Fable for Critics.
A lamb strayed for the first time into the woods, and excited much discussion among the other animals. In a mixed company, one day, when he became the subject of a friendly gossip, the goat praised him.
“Pooh!” said the lion, “this is too absurd. The beast is a pretty beast enough, but did you hear him roar? I heard him roar, and, by the manes of my fathers, when he roars he does nothing but cry ba—a—a!” And the lion bleated his best in mockery, but bleated far from well.
“Nay,” said the deer, “I do not think so badly of his voice. I liked him well enough until I saw him leap. He kicks with the hind legs in running, and with all his skipping gets over very little ground.”
“It is a bad beast altogether,” said the tiger. “He cannot roar, he cannot run, he can do nothing—and what wonder? I killed a man yesterday, and, in politeness to the new-comer, offered him a bit, upon which he had the impudence to look disgusted and say, ‘No, sir, I eat nothing but grass.’”
So the beasts criticised the lamb, each in his own way; and yet it was a very good lamb nevertheless.
Taking down the Clothes-Line.
“We had at one time in our service,” says a modern housekeeper, “a very simple young woman, who came to us through one of the registry offices in our town.
“She showed the quality of her intelligence on the very day she came. She was told to go out into the yard and take down the clothes-line, which was stretched upon half-a-dozen posts set up for that purpose.
“Bridget was at the task so long that we began to wonder what on earth had become of her. We went out to see what she was doing, and found her working away vigorously with a spade. She had dug up three of the posts and had almost completed the work upon a fourth. She did not stay with us long.”