"Well, well!" he resumed, "if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain. 'Life'--as a certain eminent philosopher in England wilt say, whenever there shall be an England to say it in--'is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences.' I have, fortunately, a few years of this before me yet; and I suppose I can permit my surroundings to alter me into anything I choose." And he did; but what a choice! I should say that the lesson hereby imparted is one of contentment combined with science. VIII. A caterpillar had crawled painfully to the top of a hop-pole, and not finding anything there to interest him, began to think of descending. "Now," soliloquized he, "if I only had a pair of wings, I should be able to manage it very nicely." So saying, he turned himself about to go down, but the heat of his previous exertion, and that of the sun, had by this time matured him into a butterfly. "Just my luck!" he growled, "I never wish for anything without getting it. I did not expect this when I came out this morning, and have nothing prepared. But I suppose I shall have to stand it." So he spread his pinions and made for the first open flower he saw. But a spider happened to be spending the summer in that vegetable, and it was not long before Mr. Butterfly was wishing himself back atop of that pole, a simple caterpillar. He had at last the pleasure of being denied a desire. _Hæc fabula docet_ that it is not a good plan to call at houses without first ascertaining who is at home there. IX. It is related of a certain Tartar priest that, being about to sacrifice a pig, he observed tears in the victim's eyes. "Now, I'd like to know what is the matter with _you_?" he asked. "Sir," replied the pig, "if your penetration were equal to that of the knife you hold, you would know without inquiring; but I don't mind telling you. I weep because I know I shall be badly roasted." "Ah," returned the priest, meditatively, having first killed the pig, "we are all pretty much alike: it is the bad roasting that frightens us. Mere death has no terrors." From this narrative learn that even priests sometimes get hold of only half a truth. X. A dog being very much annoyed by bees, ran, quite accidentally, into an empty barrel lying on the ground, and looking out at the bung-hole, addressed his tormenters thus: "Had you been temperate, stinging me only one at a time, you might have got a good deal of fun out of me. As it is, you have driven me into a secure retreat; for I can snap you up as fast as you come in through the bung-hole. Learn from this the folly of intemperate zeal." When he had concluded, he awaited a reply. There wasn't any reply; for the bees had never gone near the bung-hole; they went in the same way as he did, and made it very warm for him.