ants, and starts off to the nearest place of pleasure. Shall it be the municipal tank, — the public assembly-rooms, — where the company, though numerous, is very mixed; or some private soirée musicale, where the company is select, and the risks of interruption fewer? His journey is not without its peculiar perils. What if, by mistake, he jumps down the well? the one in which live only those two old gentlemen, wretched bachelors, who, sallying forth one night — just such a night as this — to serenade a fair one, mistook their way, saw water glistening, thought they heard her voice, and plumped down twenty feet. They never got out again, and there they are to this day, old and childless; their croak is sullen and defiant, for they are down a deep well, and can’t get out. “It is enough to sour one’s temper,” acknowledges our frog; and he goes forth delicately, looking before he leaps. “Living in such a world, I seem to be a frog abiding in a dried-up well.” The Upanishad contains no happier illustration than this.
How the rain pours down! A wall, beneath which he has rested to croak awhile, cracks, gapes, and falls. By a miracle and a very long jump he escapes; but his jump has landed him in the lively rivulet which is now swirling down the middle of the road, and so, before he can draw his legs up or collect his thoughts, he is rolled along with sticks and gravel into a ditch, sucked into a water-pipe, squirted out at the other end, received by a rushing drain, and, ere he can extricate himself, is being whirled along towards the river, where live the barbarous paddy-bird and the ruthless adjutant-crane. Better, he thinks, that the wall had fallen on him. But if he does get safe to his friends, with what gusto is he hailed! At his first note the company becomes aware of a strange
