Cobwebs from an Empty Skull

A caterpillar had crawled painfully to the top of a hop-pole, and not finding anything there to interest him, began to think of descending.

“Now,” soliloquized he, “if I only had a pair of wings, I should be able to manage it very nicely.”

So saying, he turned himself about to go down, but the heat of his previous exertion, and that of the sun, had by this time matured him into a butterfly.

“Just my luck!” he growled, “I never wish for anything without getting it.  I did not expect this when I came out this morning, and have nothing prepared.  But I suppose I shall have to stand it.”

So he spread his pinions and made for the first open flower he saw.  But a spider happened to be spending the summer in that vegetable, and it was not long before Mr. Butterfly was wishing himself back atop of that pole, a simple caterpillar.

He had at last the pleasure of being denied a desire.

Hæc fabula docet that it is not a good plan to call at houses without first ascertaining who is at home there.