Cobwebs from an Empty Skull

by Ambrose Bierce

  So she started up, and finding she could grow faster than he, she wound round and round him until she had passed up all the line she had. The oak, however, continued to grow, and as she could not disengage her coils, she was just lifted out by the root. So that ends the oak-and-ivy business, and removes a powerful temptation from the path of the young writer.

  LXXX.

  A merchant of Cairo gave a grand feast. In the midst of the revelry, the great doors of the dining-hall were pushed open from the outside, and the guests were surprised and grieved by the advent of a crocodile of a tun's girth, and as long as the moral law.

  "Thought I'd look in," said he, simply, but not without a certain grave dignity.

  "But," cried the host, from the top of the table, "I did not invite any saurians."

  "No-I know yer didn't; it's the old thing, it is: never no wacancies for saurians-saurians should orter keep theirselves to theirselves-no saurians need apply. I got it all by 'eart, I tell yer. But don't give yerself no distress; I didn't come to beg; thank 'eaven I ain't drove to that yet-leastwise I ain't done it. But I thought as 'ow yer'd need a dish to throw slops and broken wittles in it; which I fetched along this 'ere."

  And the willing creature lifted off the cover by erecting the upper half of his head till the snout of him smote the ceiling.

  Open servitude is better than covert begging.

  LXXXI.

  A gander being annoyed by the assiduous attendance of his ugly reflection in the water, determined that he would prosecute future voyages in a less susceptible element. So he essayed a sail upon the placid bosom of a clay-bank. This kind of navigation did not meet his expectations, however, and he returned with dogged despair to his pond, resolved to make a final cruise and go out of commission. He was delighted to find that the clay adhering to his hull so defiled the water that it gave back no image of him. After that, whenever he left port, he was careful to be well clayed along the water-line.

  The lesson of this is that if all geese are alike, we can banish unpleasant reflections by befouling ourselves. This is worth knowing.

  LXXXII.

  The belly and the members of the human body were in a riot. (This is not the riot recorded by an inferior writer, but a more notable and authentic one.) After exhausting the well-known arguments, they had recourse to the appropriate threat, when the man to whom they belonged thought it time for him to be heard, in his capacity as a unit.

  "Deuce take you!" he roared. "Things have come to a pretty pass if a fellow cannot walk out of a fine morning without alarming the town by a disgraceful squabble between his component parts! I am reasonably impartial, I hope, but man's devotion is due to his deity: I espouse the cause of my belly."

  Hearing this, the members were thrown into so extraordinary confusion that the man was arrested for a windmill.

  As a rule, don't "take sides." Sides of bacon, however, may be temperately acquired.

  LXXXIII.

  A man dropping from a balloon struck against a soaring eagle.

  "I beg your pardon," said he, continuing his descent; "I never could keep off eagles when in my descending node."

  "It is agreeable to meet so pleasing a gentleman, even without previous appointment," said the bird, looking admiringly down upon the lessening aeronaut; "he is the very pink of politeness. How extremely nice his liver must be. I will follow him down and arrange his simple obsequies."

  This fable is narrated for its intrinsic worth.

  LXXXIV.

  To escape from a peasant who had come suddenly upon him, an opossum adopted his favourite expedient of counterfeiting death.

  "I suppose," said the peasant, "that ninety-nine men in a hundred would go away and leave this poor creature's body to the beasts of prey." [It is notorious that man is the only living thing that will eat the animal.] "But I will give him good burial."

  So he dug a hole, and was about tumbling him into it, when a solemn voice appeared to emanate from the corpse: "Let the dead bury their dead!"

  "Whatever spirit hath wrought this miracle," cried the peasant, dropping upon his knees, "let him but add the trifling explanation of how the dead can perform this or any similar rite, and I am obedience itself. Otherwise, in goes Mr. 'Possum by these hands."

  "Ah!" meditated the unhappy beast, "I have performed one miracle, but I can't keep it up all day, you know. The explanation demanded is a trifle too heavy for even the ponderous ingenuity of a marsupial."

  And he permitted himself to be sodded over.

  If the reader knows what lesson is conveyed by this narrative, he knows-just what the writer knows.

  LXXXV.

  Three animals on board a sinking ship prepared to take to the water. It was agreed among them that the bear should be lowered alongside; the mouse (who was to act as pilot) should embark upon him at once, to beat off the drowning sailors; and the monkey should follow, with provisions for the expedition-which arrangement was successfully carried out. The fourth day out from the wreck, the bear began to propound a series of leading questions concerning dinner; when it appeared that the monkey had provided but a single nut.

  "I thought this would keep me awhile," he explained, "and you could eat the pilot."

  Hearing this, the mouse vanished like a flash into the bear's ear, and fearing the hungry beast would then demand the nut, the monkey hastily devoured it. Not being in a position to insist upon his rights, the bear merely gobbled up the monkey.

  LXXXVI.

  A lamb suffering from thirst went to a brook to drink. Putting his nose to the water, he was interested to feel it bitten by a fish. Not liking fish, he drew back and sought another place; but his persecutor getting there before him administered the same rebuff. The lamb being rather persevering, and the fish having no appointments for that day, this was repeated a few thousand times, when the former felt justified in swearing:

  "I'm eternally boiled!" said he, "if ever I experienced so many fish in all my life. It is discouraging. It inspires me with mint sauce and green peas."

  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,' amp;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 sma
ll 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."