"It is a waste of valour for us to do battle," said a lame ostrich to a negro who had suddenly come upon her in the desert; "let us cast lots to see who shall be considered the victor, and then go about our business." To this proposition the negro readily assented. They cast lots: the negro cast lots of stones, and the ostrich cast lots of feathers. Then the former went about his business, which consisted of skinning the bird. MORAL.--There is nothing like the arbitrament of chance. That form of it known as _trile-bi-joorie_ is perhaps as good as any. CXX. An author who had wrought a book of fables (the merit whereof transcended expression) was peacefully sleeping atop of the modest eminence to which he had attained, when he was rudely awakened by a throng of critics, emitting adverse judgment upon the tales he had builded. [Illustration] "Apparently," said he, "I have been guilty of some small grains of unconsidered wisdom, and the same have proven a bitterness to these excellent folk, the which they will not abide. Ah, well! those who produce the Strasburg _pâté_ and the feather-pillow are prone to regard _us_ as rival creators. I presume it is in course of nature for him who grows the pen to censure the manner of its use." So speaking, he executed a smile a hand's-breath in extent, and resumed his airy dream of dropping ducats. CXXI. For many years an opossum had anointed his tail with bear's oil, but it remained stubbornly bald-headed. At last his patience was exhausted, and he appealed to Bruin himself, accusing him of breaking faith, and calling him a quack. "Why, you insolent marsupial!" retorted the bear in a rage; "you expect my oil to give you hair upon your tail, when it will not give me even a tail. Why don't you try under-draining, or top-dressing with light compost?" They said and did a good deal more before the opossum withdrew his cold and barren member from consideration; but the judicious fabulist does not encumber his tale with extraneous matter, lest it be pointless. CXXII. "So disreputable a lot as you are I never saw!" said a sleepy rat to the casks in a wine-cellar. "Always making night hideous with your hoops and hollows, and disfiguring the day with your bunged-up appearance. There is no sleeping when once the wine has got into your heads. I'll report you to the butler!" "The sneaking tale-bearer," said the casks. "Let us beat him with our staves." "_Requiescat in pace_," muttered a learned cobweb, sententiously. "Requires a cat in the place, does it?" shrieked the rat. "Then I'm off!" To explain all the wisdom imparted by this fable would require the pen of a pig, and volumes of smoke. CXXIII. A giraffe having trodden upon the tail of a poodle, that animal flew into a blind rage, and wrestled valorously with the invading foot. "Hullo, sonny!" said the giraffe, looking down, "what are you doing there?"