r 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 th