A hen who had hatched out a quantity of ducklings, was somewhat surprised one day to see them take to the water, and sail away out of her jurisdiction. The more she thought of this the more unreasonable such conduct appeared, and the more indignant she became. She resolved that it must cease forthwith. So she soon afterward convened her brood, and conducted them to the margin of a hot pool, having a business connection with the boiling spring of Doo-sno-swair. They straightway launched themselves for a cruise--returning immediately to the land, as if they had forgotten their ship's papers. When Callow Youth exhibits an eccentric tendency, give it him hot. LXXV. "Did it ever occur to you that this manner of thing is extremely unpleasant?" asked a writhing worm of the angler who had impaled him upon a hook. "Such treatment by those who boast themselves our brothers is, possibly, fraternal--but it hurts." "I confess," replied the idler, "that our usages with regard to vermin and reptiles might be so amended as to be more temperately diabolical; but please to remember that the gentle agonies with which we afflict _you_ are wholesome and exhilarating compared with the ills we ladle out to one another. During the reign of His Pellucid Refulgence, Khatchoo Khan," he continued, absently dropping his wriggling auditor into the brook, "no less than three hundred thousand Persian subjects were put to death, in a pleasing variety of ingenious ways, for their religious beliefs." "What that has to do with your treatment of _us_" interrupted a fish, who, having bitten at the worm just then, was drawn into the conversation, "I am quite unable to see." "That," said the angler, disengaging him, "is because you have the hook through your eyeball, my edible friend." Many a truth is spoken in jest; but at least ten times as many falsehoods are uttered in dead earnest. LXXVI. A wild cat was listening with rapt approval to the melody of distant hounds tracking a remote fox. "Excellent! _bravo!_" she exclaimed at intervals. "I could sit and listen all day to the like of that. I am passionately fond of music. _Ong-core!_" Presently the tuneful sounds drew near, whereupon she began to fidget; ending by shinning up a tree, just as the dogs burst into view below her, and stifled their songs upon the body of their victim before her eyes--which protruded. [Illustration] "There is an indefinable charm," said she--"a subtle and tender spell--a mystery--a conundrum, as it were--in the sounds of an unseen orchestra. This is quite lost when the performers are visible to the audience. Distant music (if any) for your obedient servant!" LXXVII. Having been taught to turn his scraps of bad Persian into choice Latin, a parrot was puffed up with conceit. "Observe," said he, "the superiority I may boast by virtue of my classical education: I can chatter flat nonsense in the language of Cicero."