"Oh, Jupiter! take 'em off!" she gasped. "I now see that the hippopotamus was not intended to fly."
It takes more than nine bloomers to make a man.
[Illustration: The Ambitious Hippopotamus.]
A man, who had lived a beautiful purple life, went to sleep under a tree in the forest. Jove sent a huge serpent to destroy him. The man awakened as the reptile drew near.
"What a horrid sight!" he said. "But let us be thankful that the pink-and-green elephant and the feathered hippopotamus are not also in evidence."
And he took a dose of bromide and commended himself again to sleep, while the serpent withdrew in some confusion.
Jove himself couldn't get a job as Sunday-School Superintendent on his reputation.
A man stood in the archway of an ancient temple. He took in the wonderful proportions and drank of the exquisite detail in an ecstasy of delight.
"Oh, great is art!" he cried in a frenzy. "Art is all! the only God!"
Just then an earthquake came mumbling along and jarred the whole country loose.
As the man picked himself out of the jumbled-up ruins into the dust-filled air, he encountered a lion who had lost his tail and his temper in the _mélée_.
"Well, where's your art now?" snarled the lion.[1]
"All in my eye, I reckon," answered the man, as he bathed his damaged optic.
On the Not-Altogether-Credible Habits of the Ostrich.
An ostrich, who was closely pursued by a hunter, suddenly thrust his head deep down into the sand.
"Ah! ah!" exulted the hunter, "I have the silly thing at last." He advanced to place a rope around the bird's legs; but the ostrich, who had accurately timed his arrival, landed a kick in the pit of his stomach that sent him into the hereafter like a bullet through a fog-bank.
"Umph," said the ostrich as he surveyed his victim, "because a man looks sad at the opening of a jack-pot, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's only got ace-high."
[Illustration: On the Not-Altogether-Credible Habits of the Ostrich.]
An ass felt it his duty to destroy superstition, so he went up to the brass idol in the market-place and gave it a vigorous kick.
A dog came to him as he lay groaning on the ground, nursing his broken leg, and said, "Well, did you prove anything?"
"Nothing," said the other. "Except that I am an ass."