A facetious old cat seeing her kitten sleeping in a bath tub, went
down into the cellar and turned on the hot water. (For the convenience
of the bathers the bath was arranged in that way; you had to undress,
and then go down to the cellar to let on the wet.) No sooner did the
kitten remark the unfamiliar sensation, than he departed thence with a
willingness quite creditable in one who was not a professional
acrobat, and met his mother on the kitchen stairs.

"Aha! my steaming hearty!" cried the elder grimalkin; "I coveted you
when I saw the cook put you in the dinner-pot. If I have a weakness,
it is hare--hare nicely dressed, and partially boiled."

Whereupon she made a banquet of her suffering offspring.[A]

Adversity works a stupendous change in tender youth; many a young man
is never recognized by his parents after having been in hot water.

[Footnote A: Here should have followed the appropriate and obvious
classical allusion. It is known our fabulist was classically educated.
Why, then, this disgraceful omission?--TRANSLATOR.]




CXIX.


"It is a waste of valour for us to do battle," said a lame ostrich to
a negro who had suddenly come upon her in the desert; "let us cast
lots to see who shall be considered the victor, and then go about our