lustration]

XCII

A SHREWD GUESSER

A French officer, more remarkable for his birth and spirit than his
wealth, had served the Venetian republic for some years with great valor
and fidelity, but had not met with that preferment which he deserved.
One day he waited on a nobleman whom he had often solicited in vain, but
on whose friendship he had still some reliance. The reception he met
with was cool and mortifying; the nobleman turned his back upon the
veteran, and left him to find his way to the street through a suite of
apartments magnificently furnished.

He passed them lost in thought, till, casting his eyes on a most
beautiful sideboard, where a valuable collection of Venetian glass,
polished and formed in the highest degree of perfection, stood on a
damask cloth as a preparation for a splendid entertainment, he took hold
of a corner of the linen, and turning to a faithful mastiff which always
went with him, said to the animal, "Here, my poor old friend, you see
how these haughty tyrants indulge themselves, and yet how we are
treated!" The poor dog looked his master in the face, and gave tokens
that he understood him. The master walked on, but the mastiff slackened
his pace, and laying hold of the damask cloth with his teeth, gave one
hearty pull, and thus brought all the glass on the sideboard in
shivers to the ground, thus robbing the unkind nobleman of his favorite
exhibition of splendor.

[Illustration]

XCIII

ARE BEASTS MERE MACHINES?

A gentleman one day talking with a friend said that beasts were mere
machines, and had no sort of reason to direct them; and that when they
cried or made a noise, it was only one of the wheels of the clock or
machine that made it.

The friend, who was of a different opinion replied, "I have now in my
kitchen two dogs who take turns regularly every other morning to get
into the wheel. One of them, not liking his employment, hid himself on
the day that he should work, so that his companion was forced to mount
the wheel in his stead, but crying and wagging his tail, he made sign
for those about him to follow him. He at once led them to a garret,
where he found the idle dog, drove him out and killed him at once."

[Illustration]

XCIV

AN ASS CAST AWAY

An ass, belonging to a captain in the Royal Navy, then at Malta, was
shipped on board a frigate, bound from Gibraltar for that island. The
vessel struck on some sands off the Point de Gat,