When a great freshet takes possession of a country, and evicts the tenants of every hole, thicket, and burrow, there is an indiscriminate stampede of the animals for the driest and safest places: hares, rattlesnakes, mice, cats, and the carnivora cling together to the tops of trees, or wait in terror on the highest hills. So a prairie fire startles all the wild creatures with its sweep into a promiscuous race towards some spot that cannot be tenanted by flame. There they might observe the strange traits which shun each other in ordinary times or seek each other only when hunger demands its toll. While the fright and the dread of death are beginning to pass off are these creatures insensibly attracted to notice each other? Probably only as a curious deer observes a man. The danger has not established any sympathy between them. And they separate without any better opinion of each other, nor approach to geniality. Even men who are strangers, and in general dissociated by the distinctions of society, will be thrown together by some stress of the moment, part with a mutual feeling of relief, and resume their predilections. Yet man only is endowed with the magnanimity to welcome the emergencies which abolish superficial differences. They can be invaded by a circumstance which comprises them under an idea different from those which keep them asunder; and this new congruity can make the forced society congenial. It is Nature's witty rendering of the text that declares all men of one blood. The effect is grave, and under some conditions it may reach an heroic stature, but the root of wit is the nourisher; and only those creatures who are capable of annihilating capricious distinctions by a feeling of common humanness are capable of enjoying the union of heterogeneous ideas. What mutual impression do a dog and a duck make? He runs around with frolic transpiring in his tail, and barks to announce a wish to fraternize; or perhaps it is a short and nervous bark, and indicates unsettled views about ducks. Meantime, the duck waddles off with an inane quack, so remote from a bark that it must convince any well-informed dog of the hopelessness of proposing either business or pleasure to such a doting and toothless pate. He certainly must have overheard the conversation of his betters, when the Shallows, Slenders, and Silences are near. What a prompt retreat human beings make, and what wariness is expended in steering clear of them for the future! Yet I never feel quite sure that the dunces are not amused at the manœuvre. Is there a human being permitted to live without wit enough to know when he is avoided? Even this duck has a twinkle in that bead of an eye, as it rejoins the other ducks, that seems to convey to us its sense of the absurdness of a creature so caninely exuberant. Or was it a duck which I noticed? I am sure I have often seen creatures who are hopelessly posed or scandalized waddle away from some superior extravagance.