The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III | Page 9

ingenious instrument,
calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral
double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He
burrows in the ground so that you can not find him, and he flies away
so that you can not catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but
utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the
ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. I find
him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and we
shall not want any), the squashes (small loss), and the melons (which
never ripen). The best way to deal with the striped bug is to sit down by
the hills, and patiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can annoy
him. This, however, takes time. It takes all day and part of the night.
For he flieth in the darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get up
before the dew is off the plants,--it goes off very early,--you can
sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is my panacea: if I can get the disease
of a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am all right); and soot is
unpleasant to the bug. But the best thing to do is set a toad to catch the
bugs. The toad at once establishes the most intimate relations with the

bug. It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower animals. The
difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill. If you know your
toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build a tight fence round the
plants, which the toad can not jump over. This, however, introduces a
new element. I find that I have a zoölogical garden. It is an unexpected
result of my little enterprise, which never aspired to the completeness
of the Paris "Jardin des Plantes."

A TRAVELED DONKEY
BY BERT LESTON TAYLOR
But Buddie got no farther. The sound of music came to her ears, and
she stopped to listen. The music was faint and sweet, with the sighful
quality of an Æolian harp. Now it seemed near, now far.
"What can it be?" said Buddie.
"Wait here and I'll find out," said Snowfeathers. He darted away and
returned before you could count fifty.
"A traveling musician," he reported. "Come along. It's only a little
way."
Back he flew, with Buddie scrambling after. A few yards brought her to
a little open place, and here was the queerest sight she had yet seen in
this queer wood.
On a bank of reindeer moss, at the foot of a great white birch, a
mouse-colored donkey sat playing a lute. Over his head, hanging from
a bit of bark, was the sign:
WHILE YOU WAIT OLD SAWS RESET
After the many strange things that Buddie had come upon in
Queerwood, nothing could surprise her very much. Besides, as she
never before had seen a donkey, or a lute, or the combination of donkey

and lute, it did not strike her as especially remarkable that the musician
should be holding his instrument upside down, and sweeping the
strings with one of his long ears, which he was able to wave without
moving his head a jot. And this it was that gave to the music its soft
and furry-purry quality.
The Donkey greeted Buddie with a careless nod, and remarked, as if
anticipating a comment he had heard many times:
"Oh, yes; I play everything by ear."
"Please keep on playing," said Buddie, taking a seat on another clump
of reindeer moss.
"I intended to," said the Donkey; and the random chords changed to a
crooning melody which wonderfully pleased Buddie, whose
opportunities to hear music were sadly few. As for the White Blackbird,
he tucked his little head under his wing and went fast asleep.
"Well, what do you think of it?" asked the Donkey, putting down the
lute.
"Very nice, sir," answered Buddie, enthusiastically; though she added
to herself: The idea of saying sir to an animal! "Would you please tell
me your name?" she requested.
The Donkey pawed open a saddle-bag, drew forth with his teeth a card,
and presented it to Buddie, who spelled out the following:
PROFESSOR BRAY TENORE BARITONALE TEACHER OF
SINGING ALL METHODS CONCERTS AND RECITALS
While Buddie was reading this the Donkey again picked up his
instrument and thrummed the strings.
"Did you ever see a donkey play a lute?" said he. "That's an old saw,"
he added.
"I never saw a donkey before," said Buddie.

"You haven't traveled much," said the other. "The world is full of
them."
"This is