Cobwebs from an Empty Skull

A frog who had been sitting up all night in neighbourly converse with an echo of elegant leisure, went out in the grey of the morning to obtain a cheap breakfast.  Seeing a tadpole approach,

“Halt!” he croaked, “and show cause why I should not eat you.”

The tadpole stopped and displayed a fine tail.

“Enough,” said the frog:  “I mistook you for one of us; and if there is anything I like, it is frog.  But no frog has a tail, as a matter of course.”

While he was speaking, however, the tail ripened and dropped off, and its owner stood revealed in his edible character.

“Aha!” ejaculated the frog, “so that is your little game!  If, instead of adopting a disguise, you had trusted to my mercy, I should have spared you.  But I am down upon all manner of deceit.”

And he had him down in a moment.

Learn from this that he would have eaten him anyhow.