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

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 zo?logical 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 ?olian 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 the farthest I've ever been from home," confessed Buddie, feeling very insignificant indeed.
"And how far may that be?"
Buddie couldn't tell exactly.
"But it can't be a great way," she said. "I live in the log house by the lake."
"Pooh!" said the Donkey. "That's no distance at all." Buddie shrank another inch or two. "I'm a great traveler myself. All donkeys travel that can. If a donkey travels, you know, he may come home a horse; and to become a horse is, of course, the ambition of every donkey!"
"Is it?" was all Buddie could think of to remark. What could she say that would interest a globe-trotter?
"Perhaps you have an old saw you'd like reset," suggested the Donkey, still thrumming the lute-strings.
Buddie thought a moment.
"There's an old saw hanging up in our woodshed," she began, but got no farther.
"Hee-haw! hee-haw!" laughed the Donkey. "Thistles and cactus, but that's rich!" And he hee-hawed until the tears ran down his nose. Poor Buddie, who knew she was being laughed at but didn't know why, began to feel very much like crying and wished she might