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Page 27
XXXVII
THE MICE AND THE SCREECH-OWL
(BOOK XI.--No. 9)
It is not always wise to say to your company, "Just listen to this joke"
or "What do you think of this for a marvel?" for one can never be sure
that the listeners will regard the matter in the same way that the
teller does. Yet here is a case that makes an exception to this good
rule, and I maintain that it is in truth wonderful, and, although it has
the appearance of being a fable, it is in reality absolute fact.
There was once an extremely old pine-tree which an owl, that grim bird
which Atropus[18] takes for her interpreter, had made to serve as his
palace. But there were other tenants lodging in its cavernous and
time-rotted trunk. These were mice, well fed, positive balls of fat, but
not one of them had a foot. They had all been mutilated. The owl had
nipped their feet off with his beak, whilst feeding and fostering them
with wheat from neighbouring stacks.
It must be confessed that this bird had reasoned.
Doubtless, in his time, when hunting mice, he had found that after
bringing them home they escaped again from the trunk, and to prevent
the recurrence of such a loss the artful rascal had thenceforth nipped
off the feet of all he caught, keeping them prisoners and eating them
one to-day and one to-morrow. To eat them all at once would have been
impossible. He had his health to think of. His forethought, which went
quite as far as ours, extended to bringing them grain for their
subsistence.
* * * * *
If this is not reasoning, then I do not understand what reasoning is.
See what arguments he used:--
"When these mice are caught they run away, therefore I must eat them as
I catch them. What all? Impossible! But would it not be well to keep
some for a needy future? If so, I must keep them and feed them too,
without their escaping. But how's that to be done? Happy thought! Nip
off their feet!"
Now find me among human beings anything better carried out. Did
Aristotle and his followers do any better thinking, by my faith?
NOTE.--This is not a fable. The thing actually occurred, although
marvellous enough and almost incredible. I have perhaps carried the
forethought of this owl too far, for I do not pretend to establish in
animals a line of reasoning; but in this style of literature a little
exaggeration is pardonable.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 18: One of the three Fates, the first and second being Clotho
and Lachesis. They spun, measured, and cut off, respectively, the thread
of life for men at their birth.]
[Illustration]
XXXVIII
THE COMPANIONS OF ULYSSES
(BOOK XII.--No. 1)
That great hero-wanderer Ulysses had been with his companions driven
hither and thither at the will of the winds for ten years, never knowing
what their ultimate fate was to be. At length they disembarked upon a
shore where Circe, the daughter of Apollo, held her court. Receiving
them she brewed a delicious but baneful liquor, which she made them
drink. The result of this was that first they lost their reason, and a
few moments after, their bodies took the forms and features of various
animals; some unwieldy, some small. Ulysses alone, having the wisdom to
withstand the temptation of the treacherous cup, escaped the
metamorphosis. He, besides possessing wisdom, bore the look of a hero
and had the gift of honeyed speech, so that it came about that the
goddess herself imbibed a poison little different from her own; that is
to say, she became enamoured of the hero and declared her love to him.
Now was the time for Ulysses to profit by this turn of events, and he
was too cunning to miss the opportunity, so he begged and obtained the
boon that his friends should be restored to their natural shapes.
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