took to living where
the water was not deep enough for the big fish to swim, and this made it
all the harder to get enough to eat. The mouths of the Frogs in those
days were not big. In fact, they were quite small. You see, living on
the kind of food they did, they had no need of big mouths.

"One day as a Great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather Frog sat with just
his head out of water, wondering what it would seem like to have his
stomach really filled, a school of little fish came swimming about him,
and it popped into his head that if little fish were good for big fish
to eat, they might be good for a Frog to eat. So he caught the first
one that came within reach, and he found it was good to eat. He liked it
so well that after that he caught fish whenever he could. Of course he
swallowed them whole. He had to, because he had no chewing or biting
teeth.

"Now the Frogs always have been famous for their appetites, and
Great-grandfather Frog found that it took a great many of these teeny
weeny fish to make a comfortable meal. He was thinking of this one day
when a larger fish came within reach, and almost without realizing what
he was doing Great-grandfather snapped at and caught him. He caught the
fish by the tail and at once began to swallow it, which, of course, was
no way to swallow a fish. But Great-grandfather Frog had much to learn
in those day, and so he tried to swallow that fish tail first instead
of head first. He got the tail down and the smallest part of the body,
and then that fish stuck. Yes, Sir, that fish stuck. The fact was,
Great-grandfather Frog's mouth wasn't wide enough. It was bad enough not
to be able to swallow all of that fish, but what was worse was the
discovery that he couldn't get up again what he had swallowed. That fish
was stuck! It would go neither down nor up.

"Poor Great-grandfather Frog was in a terrible fix. Big tears rolled
down his cheeks. He choked and choked and choked, until it looked very
much as if he might choke to death. Just in time, in the very nick of
time, who should come along but Old Mother Nature. She saw right away
what the trouble was, and she pulled out the fish. Then she asked how
that fish had happened to be in such a place as Great-grandfather Frog's
mouth. When he could get his breath, he told her all about it--how food
had been getting scarce and how he had discovered that fish were good to
eat, and how he had make a mistake in catching a fish too big for h