They call’d the Dog, they call’d the Cat, And little Kitten too, And down they put the Cod and sauce, To see what brutes would do. XVI. Old Tray lick’d all the oysters up, Puss never stood at crimps, But munch’d the Cod--and little Kit Quite feasted on the shrimps! XVII. The thing was odd, and minus Cod And sauce, they stood like posts; O, prudent folks, for fear of hoax, Put no belief in Ghosts! [Illustration: FRIENDS AWAITING A SAILOR’S RETURN.] A SNAKE-SNACK. “Twine ye, twine ye.”--SIR W. SCOTT. IT was my good fortune once, at Charing Cross, to witness the feeding of the Boa Constrictor; rather a rare occurrence, and difficult of observation, the reptile not being remarkable for the regularity of its dinner-hour; and a very considerable interval intervenes, as the world knows, between Gorge the First, and Gorge the Second, Gorge the Third, and Gorge the Fourth. I was not in time to see the serpent’s first dart at the prey; she had already twisted herself round her victim,--a living White Rabbit--who with a large dark eye gazed piteously through one of the folds, and looked most eloquently that line in Hamlet-- “O could I shuffle off this mortal _coil_!” [Illustration: THE BOA AFTER A MEAL.] The Snake evidently only embraced him in a kill-him-when-I-want-him manner, just firmly enough to prevent an escape--but her lips were glued on his, in a close “Judas’ kiss.” So long a time elapsed, in this position, both as marble-still as poor old Laocoon with his leaches on, that I really began to doubt the tale of the Boa’s ability in swallowing; and to associate the hoax before me, with that of the Bottle Conjuror. The head of the snake, in fact, might have gone without difficulty into a wine-glass, and the throat, down which the rabbit was to proceed whole, seemed not at all thicker than my thumb. In short, I thought the reported _cram_ was nothing but _stuff_, and the only other visitor declared himself of my opinion: “If that ’ere little wiper swallows up the rabbit, I’ll bolt um both!” and he seemed capable of the feat. He looked like a personification of what Political Economists call the Public Consumer; or, Geoffrey Crayon’s Stout Gentleman, seen through Carpenter’s Solar Microscope; a genuine Edax Rerum; one of your devourers of legs of mutton and trimmings, for wagers: the delight of eating-houses, and the dread of ordinaries. The contrast was whimsical, between his mountain of mummy, and the slim Macaroni figure of the Snake, the reputed Glutton. However, the Boa began at last to prepare for the meal, by lubricating the muzzle of the Rabbit with her slimy tongue, and then commenced in earnest, As far as in her lay to take him in, A stranger dying with so fair a skin.