88 OUR COUNTRY NEIGHBORS. 



ous little note in his throat, while old Unke would answer 

 only with a cracked gutteral more singular than agreeable ; 

 and to all outward appearance the two were as good 

 friends as their different natures would allow. 



One day, however, the conservatory became a scene of a 

 tragedy of the deepest dye. We were summoned below by 

 shrieks and howls of horror. "Do pray come down and 

 see what this vile, nasty, horrid old frog has been doing !'* 

 Down we came ; and there sat our virtuous old philosopher, 

 with his poor little brother's hind legs still sticking out of 

 the corner of his mouth, as if he were smoking them for 

 a cigar, all helplessly palpitating as they were. In fact, 

 our solemn old friend had done what many a solemn hyp- 

 ocrite before has done, swallowed his poor brother, neck 

 and crop, and sat there with the most brazen indifference, 

 looking as if he had done the most proper and virtuous 

 thing in the world. 



Immediately he was marched out of the conservatory at 

 the point of the walking-stick, and made to hop down into 

 the river, into whose waters he splashed ; and we saw him 

 no more. We regret to say that the popular indignation 

 was so precipitate in its results ; otherwise the special artist 

 who sketched Hum, the son of Buz, intended to have made 

 a sketch of the old villain, as he sat with his luckless vic- 

 tim's hind legs projecting from his solemn mouth. With 

 all his moral faults, he was a good sitter, and would prob- 



