Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  He probably meant amazement and fear; under the influence of powerful emotions even lambs will talk “shop.”

  “Well, good bye,” said his tormentor, taking a final nip at the animal’s muzzle; “I should like to amuse you some more; but I have other fish to fry.”

  This tale teaches a good quantity of lessons; but it does not teach why this fish should have persecuted this lamb.

  LXXXVII.

  A mole, in pursuing certain geological researches, came upon the buried carcase of a mule, and was about to tunnel him.

  “Slow down, my good friend,” said the deceased. “Push your mining operations in a less sacrilegious direction. Respect the dead, as you hope for death!”

  “You have that about you,” said the gnome, “that must make your grave respected in a certain sense, for at least such a period as your immortal part may require for perfect exhalation. The immunity I accord is not conceded to your sanctity, but extorted by your scent. The sepulchres of moles only are sacred.”

  To moles, the body of a lifeless mule

  A dead mule’s carcase is, and nothing more.

  LXXXVIII.

  “I think I’ll set my sting into you, my obstructive friend,” said a bee to an iron pump against which she had flown; “you are always more or less in the way.”

  “If you do,” retorted the other, “I’ll pump on you, if I can get any one to work my handle.”

  Exasperated by this impotent conservative threat, she pushed her little dart against him with all her vigour. When she tried to sheathe it again she couldn’t, but she still made herself useful about the hive by hooking on to small articles and dragging them about. But no other bee would sleep with her after this; and so, by her ill-judged resentment, she was self-condemmed to a solitary cell.

  The young reader may profitably beware.

  LXXXIX.

  A Chinese dog, who had been much abroad with his master, was asked, upon his return, to state the most ludicrous fact he had observed.

  “There is a country,” said he, “the people of which are eternally speaking about ‘Persian honesty,’ ‘Persian courage,’ ‘Persian loyalty,’ ‘Persian love of fair play,’ &c., as if the Persians enjoyed a clear monopoly of these universal virtues. What is more, they speak thus in blind good faith — with a dense gravity of conviction that is simply amazing.”

  “But,” urged the auditors, “we requested something ludicrous, not amazing.”

  “Exactly; the ludicrous part is the name of their country, which is—”

  “What?”

  “Persia.”

  XC.

  There was a calf, who, suspecting the purity of the milk supplied him by his dam, resolved to transfer his patronage to the barn-yard pump.

  “Better,” said he, “a pure article of water, than a diet that is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl.”

  But, although extremely regular in his new diet — taking it all the time — he did not seem to thrive as might have been expected. The larger orders he drew, the thinner and the more transparent he became; and at last, when the shadow of his person had become to him a vague and unreal memory, he repented, and applied to be reinstated in his comfortable sinecure at the maternal udder.

  “Ah! my prodigal son,” said the old lady, lowering her horns as if to permit him to weep upon her neck, “I regret that it is out of my power to celebrate your return by killing the fatted calf; but what I can I will do.”

  And she killed him instead.

  Mot herl yaff ecti onk nocksal loth ervir tu esperfec tlyc old.[E]

  XCI.

  “There, now,” said a kitten, triumphantly, laying a passive mouse at the feet of her mother. “I flatter myself I am coming on with a reasonable degree of rapidity. What will become of the minor quadrupeds when I have attained my full strength and ferocity, it is mournful to conjecture!”

  “Did he give you much trouble?” inquired the aged ornament of the hearth-side, with a look of tender solicitude.

  “Trouble!” echoed the kitten, “I never had such a fight in all my life! He was a downright savage — in his day.”

  “My Falstaffian issue,” rejoined the Tabby, dropping her eyelids and composing her head for a quiet sleep, “the above is a toy mouse.”

  XCII.

  A crab who had travelled from the mouth of the Indus all the way to Ispahan, knocked, with much chuckling, at the door of the King’s physician.

  “Who’s there?” shouted the doctor, from his divan within.

  “A bad case of cancer,” was the complacent reply.

  “Good!” returned the doctor; “I’ll cure you, my friend.”

  So saying, he conducted his facetious patient into the kitchen, and potted him in pickle. It cured him — of practical jocularity.

  May the fable heal you, if you are afflicted with that form of evil.

  XCIII.

  A certain magician owned a learned pig, who had lived a cleanly gentlemanly life, achieving great fame, and winning the hearts of all the people. But perceiving he was not happy, the magician, by a process easily explained did space permit, transformed him into a man. Straightway the creature abandoned his cards, his timepiece, his musical instruments, and all other devices of his profession, and betook him to a pool of mud, wherein he inhumed himself to the tip of his nose.

  “Ten minutes ago,” said the magician reprovingly, “you would have scorned to do an act like that.”

  “True,” replied the biped, with a contented grunt; “I was then a learned pig; I am now a learned man.”

  XCIV.

  “Nature has been very kind to her creatures,” said a giraffe to an elephant. “For example, your neck being so very short, she has given you a proboscis wherewith to reach your food; and I having no proboscis, she has bestowed upon me a long neck.”

  “I think, my good friend, you have been among the theologians,” said the elephant. “I doubt if I am clever enough to argue with you. I can only say it does not strike me that way.”

  “But, really,” persisted the giraffe, “you must confess your trunk is a great convenience, in that it enables you to reach the high branches of which you are so fond, even as my long neck enables me.”

  “Perhaps,” mused the ungrateful pachyderm, “if we could not reach the higher branches, we should develop a taste for the lower ones.”

  “In any case,” was the rejoinder, “we can never be sufficiently thankful that we are unlike the lowly hippopotamus, who can reach neither the one nor the other.”

  “Ah! yes,” the elephant assented, “there does not seem to have been enough of Nature’s kindness to go round.”

  “But the hippopotamus has his roots and his rushes.”

  “It is not easy to see how, with his present appliances, he could obtain anything else.”

  This fable teaches nothing; for those who perceive the meaning of it either knew it before, or will not be taught.

  XCV.

  A pious heathen who was currying favour with his wooden deity by sitting for some years motionless in a treeless plain, observed a young ivy putting forth her tender shoots at his feet. He thought he could endure the additional martyrdom of a little shade, and begged her to make herself quite at home.

  “Exactly,” said the plant; “it is my mission to adorn venerable ruins.”

  She lapped her clinging tendrils about his wasted shanks, and in six months had mantled him in green.

  “It is now time,” said the devotee, a year later, “for me to fulfil the remainder of my religious vow. I must put in a few seasons of howling and leaping. You have been very good, but I no longer require your gentle ministrations.”

  “But I require yours,” replied the vine; “you have become a second nature to me. Let others indulge in the delights of gymnastic worship; you and I will ‘surfer and be strong’ — respectively.”

  The devotee muttered something about the division of labour, and his bones are still pointed out to the pilgrim.

  XCVI.


  A fox seeing a swan afloat, called out:

  “What ship is that? I wish to take passage by your line.”

  “Got a ticket?” inquired the fowl.

  “No; I’ll make it all right with the company, though.”

  So the swan moored alongside, and he embarked, — deck passage. When they were well off shore the fox intimated that dinner would be agreeable.

  “I would advise you not to try the ship’s provisions,” said the bird; “we have only salt meat on board. Beware the scurvy!”

  “You are quite right,” replied the passenger; “I’ll see if I can stay my stomach with the foremast.”

  So saying he bit off her neck, and she immediately capsizing, he was drowned.

  MORAL — highly so, but not instructive.

  XCVII.

  A monkey finding a heap of cocoa-nuts, gnawed into one, then dropped it, gagging hideously.

  “Now, this is what I call perfectly disgusting!” said he: “I can never leave anything lying about but some one comes along and puts a quantity of nasty milk into it!”

  A cat just then happening to pass that way began rolling the cocoa-nuts about with her paw.

  “Yeow!” she exclaimed; “it is enough to vex the soul of a cast-iron dog! Whenever I set out any milk to cool, somebody comes and seals it up tight as a drum!”

  Then perceiving one another, and each thinking the other the offender, these enraged animals contended, and wrought a mutual extermination. Whereby two worthy consumers were lost to society, and a quantity of excellent food had to be given to the poor.

  XCVIII.

  A mouse who had overturned an earthern jar was discovered by a cat, who entered from an adjoining room and began to upbraid him in the harshest and most threatening manner.

  “You little wretch!” said she, “how dare you knock over that valuable urn? If it had been filled with hot water, and I had been lying before it asleep, I should have been scalded to death.”

  “If it had been full of water,” pleaded the mouse, “it would not have upset.”

  “But I might have lain down in it, monster!” persisted the cat.

  “No, you couldn’t,” was the answer; “it is not wide enough.”

  “Fiend!” shrieked the cat, smashing him with her paw; “I can curl up real small when I try.”

  The ultima ratio of very angry people is frequently addressed to the ear of the dead.

  XCIX.

  In crossing a frozen pool, a monkey slipped and fell, striking upon the back of his head with considerable force, so that the ice was very much shattered. A peacock, who was strutting about on shore thinking what a pretty peacock he was, laughed immoderately at the mishap. N.B. — All laughter is immoderate when a fellow is hurt — if the fellow is oneself.

  “Bah!” exclaimed the sufferer; “if you could see the beautiful prismatic tints I have knocked into this ice, you would laugh out of the other side of your bill. The splendour of your tail is quite eclipsed.”

  Thus craftily did he inveigle the vain bird, who finally came and spread his tail alongside the fracture for comparison. The gorgeous feathers at once froze fast to the ice, and — in short, that artless fowl passed a very uncomfortable winter.

  C.

  A volcano, having discharged a few million tons of stones upon a small village, asked the mayor if he thought that a tolerably good supply for building purposes.

  “I think,” replied that functionary, “if you give us another dash of granite, and just a pinch of old red sandstone, we could manage with what you have already done for us. We would, however, be grateful for the loan of your crater to bake bricks.”

  “Oh, certainly; parties served at their residences.” Then, after the man had gone, the mountain added, with mingled lava and contempt: “The most insatiable people I ever contracted to supply. They shall not have another pebble!”

  He banked his fires, and in six weeks was as cold as a neglected pudding. Then might you have seen the heaving of the surface boulders, as the people began stirring forty fathoms beneath.

  When you have got quite enough of anything, make it manifest by asking for some more. You won’t get it.

  CI.

  “I entertain for you a sentiment of profound amity,” said the tiger to the leopard. “And why should I not? for are we not members of the same great feline family?”

  “True,” replied the leopard, who was engaged in the hopeless endeavour to change his spots; “since we have mutually plundered one another’s hunting grounds of everything edible, there remains no grievance to quarrel about. You are a good fellow; let us embrace!”

  They did so with the utmost heartiness; which being observed by a contiguous monkey, that animal got up a tree, where he delivered himself of the wisdom following:

  “There is nothing so touching as these expressions of mutual regard between animals who are vulgarly believed to hate one another. They render the brief intervals of peace almost endurable to both parties. But the difficulty is, there are so many excellent reasons why these relatives should live in peace, that they won’t have time to state them all before the next fight.”

  CII.

  A woodpecker, who had bored a multitude of holes in the body of a dead tree, was asked by a robin to explain their purpose.

  “As yet, in the infancy of science,” replied the woodpecker, “I am quite unable to do so. Some naturalists affirm that I hide acorns in these pits; others maintain that I get worms out of them. I endeavoured for some time to reconcile the two theories; but the worms ate my acorns, and then would not come out. Since then, I have left science to work out its own problems, while I work out the holes. I hope the final decision may be in some way advantageous to me; for at my nest I have a number of prepared holes which I can hammer into some suitable tree at a moment’s notice. Perhaps I could insert a few into the scientific head.”

  “No-o-o,” said the robin, reflectively, “I should think not. A prepared hole is an idea; I don’t think it could get in.”

  MORAL. — It might be driven in with a steam-hammer.

  CIII.

  “Are you going to this great hop?” inquired a spruce cricket of a labouring beetle.

  “No,” replied he, sadly, “I’ve got to attend this great ball.”

  “Blest if I know the difference,” drawled a more offensive insect, with his head in an empty silk hat; “and I’ve been in society all my life. But why was I not invited to either hop or ball?”

  He is now invited to the latter.

  CIV.

  “Too bad, too bad,” said a young Abyssinian to a yawning hippopotamus.

  “What is ‘too bad?’” inquired the quadruped. “What is the matter with you?”

  “Oh, I never complain,” was the reply; “I was only thinking of the niggard economy of Nature in building a great big beast like you and not giving him any mouth.”

  “H’m, h’m! it was still worse,” mused the beast, “to construct a great wit like you and give him no seasonable occasion for the display of his cleverness.”

  A moment later there were a cracking of bitten bones, a great gush of animal fluids, the vanishing of two black feet — in short, the fatal poisoning of an indiscreet hippopotamus.

  The rubbing of a bit of lemon about the beaker’s brim is the finishing-touch to a whiskey punch. Much misery may be thus averted.

  CV.

  A salmon vainly attempted to leap up a cascade. After trying a few thousand times, he grew so fatigued that he began to leap less and think more. Suddenly an obvious method of surmounting the difficulty presented itself to the salmonic intelligence.

  “Strange,” he soliloquized, as well as he could in the water,—”very strange I did not think of it before! I’ll go above the fall and leap downwards.”

  So he went out on the bank, walked round to the upper side of the fall, and found he could leap over quite easily. Ever afterwards when he went up-stream in the spring to be caught, he adopted this plan. He has been hea
rd to remark that the price of salmon might be brought down to a merely nominal figure, if so many would not wear themselves out before getting up to where there is good fishing.

  CVI.

  “The son of a jackass,” shrieked a haughty mare to a mule who had offended her by expressing an opinion, “should cultivate the simple grace of intellectual humility.”

  “It is true,” was the meek reply, “I cannot boast an illustrious ancestry; but at least I shall never be called upon to blush for my posterity. Yonder mule colt is as proper a son—”

  “Yonder mule colt?” interrupted the mare, with a look of ineffable contempt for her auditor; “that is my colt!”

  “The consort of a jackass and the mother of mules,” retorted he, quietly, “should cultivate the simple thingamy of intellectual whatsitsname.”

  The mare muttered something about having some shopping to do, threw on her harness, and went out to call a cab.

  CVII.

  “Hi! hi!” squeaked a pig, running after a hen who had just left her nest; “I say, mum, you dropped this ‘ere. It looks wal’able; which I fetched it along!” And splitting his long face, he laid a warm egg at her feet.

  “You meddlesome bacon!” cackled the ungrateful bird; “if you don’t take that orb directly back, I ‘ll sit on you till I hatch you out of your saddle-cover!”

  MORAL. — Virtue is its only reward.

  CVIII.

  A rustic, preparing to devour an apple, was addressed by a brace of crafty and covetous birds:

  “Nice apple that,” said one, critically examining it. “I don’t wish to disparage it — wouldn’t say a word against that vegetable for all the world. But I never can look upon an apple of that variety without thinking of my poisoned nestling! Ah! so plump, and rosy, and — rotten!”

  “Just so,” said the other. “And you remember my good father, who perished in that orchard. Strange that so fair a skin should cover so vile a heart!”

  Just then another fowl came flying up.

  “I came in, all haste,” said he, “to warn you about that fruit. My late lamented wife ate some off the same tree. Alas! how comely to the eye, and how essentially noxious!”