ARKANSAS remains on the mind (and the traveller's notebook) as a vast forest of fine timber standing in swamps. There are no doubt exceptions, but they do not suffice to affect the general impression. And if I owned Arkansas I think I should rent it to some one else to live in; especially to some one fond of frogs. For myself, I feel no tenderness towards the monotonous batrachian. Even in a bill of fare the tenderness is all on the frog's side. But on the whole, I like him best when he is cooked. In the water with his "damnable iteration" of Yank! yank! yank! I detest him--legs and all. But served "a cresson," with a clear brown gravy, I find no aggressiveness in him. It gets cooked out of him: he becomes the gentlest eating possible. Butter would not melt in his mouth, though it does on his legs. There is none of the valiant mouse-impaling "mud-compeller" about him when you foregather with him as a side dish. Aristophanes would not recognize him, and the "nibbler of cheese rind" might then triumph easily over him. Yet to think how once he shuddered the earth, and shook Olympus! The goddess that leans upon a spear wept for him, and Aphrodite among her roses trembled. But here in Arkansas, on a hot night in "the Moon of Strawberries," what a multitudinous horror they are these "tuneful natives of the reedy lake!" Like the laughter of the sea, beyond arithmetic. Like the laughter of the sea, beyond arithmetic. Like the complainings of the plagued usurers in Hell, beyond compassion. I cannot venture my pen upon it. It is like launching out upon "the tenth wave," for an infinite natation upon cycles of floods. It is endless; snakes with tails in their mouths; trying to correct the grammar of a Mexican's English.