Oh, my friend! Forgive my sins toward you. For I have lost her, and I plan to burn myself alive."
When the monkey heard this, he laughed and said: "Come now! I knew from the very beginning that you were henpecked and in leading-strings. And this proves it. You dunderhead! You despair when you ought to be happy. When a wife like that dies, you ought to give a party. For the proverb says:
A wife forever nagging
And falling in a rage,
Is not a wife, say sages,
But premature old age.
Therefore with patient effort
Avoid the very name
Of every earthly woman,
If comfort be your aim.
For what she feels, she does not say;
She speaks and looks a different way;
Far from her looks her actions veer:
Oh, woman, woman! You are queer.
But enough!
One fact suffices. Cite no more!
They kill the children that they bore.
And yet:
Though girls are tasteless, hard, and selfish,
Boys think them sweet and soft and elfish."
"True enough," said the crocodile, "but what am I to do? Two calamities have befallen me. First, my home is ruined. And second, I have quarreled with
