And he cried, "What a very odd nose!
So exceedingly _sharp_. Why, it's funnier far
Than your porcupine coat and your toes."
Then most rudely he made all the echoes resound
With "he-hees!" and "haw-haws!" and "ho-hoes!"

The Echidna made answer, "My merry young friend,
If your own comic nose you could see,
Like a juvenile shovel exceedingly _flat_,
I am sure you'd stop laughing at me;
For _perfectly lovely_, beside it, is mine.
Ho! ho! and haw! haw! and he! he!"

A PERSONATION: WHO AM I?

There have been few people more written about, and yet there is very
little known of me. I wish I had known, during my life, that I was to
become so famous, for I might have taken pains to leave accurate
accounts of myself. I wrote a great deal, yet there is much discussion
even over my signature. I was born and brought up in the country, as you
can easily judge from the many allusions to country pleasures and sights
in my works. My parents were poor, and I had to depend on myself; and
when still young decided to go to London--many say because I could not
live happily with my wife, whom I had married when but eighteen. I
sought and found employment in London in the theatres. I was anxious to
return home (which I had left a poor lad) a rich man; so I worked early
and late, and about twelve years after leaving home was able to buy one
of the best houses in my native place. It has always been supposed I did
not like my wife very much, because in my will I left her only my
"second-best bed"; but then people forget that she also had her dower. I
wrote over thirty-seven books, though some of the writings attributed to
me are not mine, and scholars will dispute about me probably to the end
of time.

Except that I was born, married, went to London, wrote, returned home,
made a will, and died, there is nothing certainly known about me:
everything else is conjecture, for, alas! I had no Boswell. My books
have been translated into all civilized tongues, my sayings are as
familiar in men's mouths "as household words," and though about me the
world may know little, no one can be considered well educated who is not
conversant with my books.

I forgot to tell you I was born on the 23d of April, 1564, and died on
the 23d of April, 1616--not an old man, you see, to have gained such
fame; yet every year many pilgrims visit my birth-place and my grave,
the epitaph on which has alone enabled me to lie quietly in