Читать книгу Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture - Палмер Кокс - Страница 19

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This evening I accepted an invitation from a member of the Academy of Science to attend a regular meeting. I started out almost under protest, thinking it would prove a very dry entertainment. It had been said that at their meetings they conversed only about fossils or strata, or grew warm while arguing some point about the Azoic or Silurian age, that period before the Dinotherium or even the Mastodon ran bellowing across the flinty earth. I was agreeably disappointed, however. For I found it not only instructive, but amusing to others than scientists. The President announced to the Academy that a feathered mouse had been sent by an unknown friend from a distant town. A vote of thanks was then tendered the donor. The feathered mouse, however, proved to be a cruel fraud, for a subsequent examination revealed the painful fact that the feathers were stuck to the skin by some adhesive substance. The vote of thanks was then rescinded, and the feathered mouse was informally introduced to the office cat.

A communication was then read from a man in the interior. He informed the Academy that he had in his possession a large sow, which, when quite a small pig, had been severely bitten by a black dog, which made a lasting impression upon her. In after years if any of her litter were black she singled them out, and devoured them with as little remorse as an old woman would a dish of stir-about. The sow had that day died from the effects of eating a tarantula, and he offered to donate her to the Academy, providing they would bear the cost of transporting her to the city. By a unanimous vote the communication was laid under the table.

Quite a discussion then took place as to whether pigs really do see the wind, and if so, why?

THE PRESIDENT OF THE ACADEMY.

A member then presented the Academy with a new species of snail, or slug, which he found in the mountains, and which had but one horn. He proposed having it called a “unicorn snail.” Quite a controversy followed. Several members maintained that the snail imprudently left its horns out over night, and one, getting nipped by the frost, dropped off. This proposition angered the generous donor, and reaching forth a hand trembling with emotion, he lifted the snail from the palm of the admiring President, and laid it down gently upon the floor—as a mother might deposit an infant in the cradle—and while the Academy stood spell-bound, before a tongue could be loosened from the roof of a mouth, or a hand stretched to save, he planted the sole of a number eleven boot upon the crowning back of the little gasteropod, and when he lifted his foot again, all that was visible of the one-horned snail was a little grease spot upon the floor, the size of an average rain drop. This inhuman act seemed to throw a gloom over the Academy.

No further business appearing, the meeting adjourned.