Cobwebs from an Empty Skull

To escape from a peasant who had come suddenly upon him, an opossum adopted his favourite expedient of counterfeiting death.

“I suppose,” said the peasant, “that ninety-nine men in a hundred would go away and leave this poor creature’s body to the beasts of prey.” [It is notorious that man is the only living thing that will eat the animal.] “But I will give him good burial.”

So he dug a hole, and was about tumbling him into it, when a solemn voice appeared to emanate from the corpse:  “Let the dead bury their dead!”

“Whatever spirit hath wrought this miracle,” cried the peasant, dropping upon his knees, “let him but add the trifling explanation of how the dead can perform this or any similar rite, and I am obedience itself.  Otherwise, in goes Mr.  ’Possum by these hands.”

“Ah!” meditated the unhappy beast, “I have performed one miracle, but I can’t keep it up all day, you know.  The explanation demanded is a trifle too heavy for even the ponderous ingenuity of a marsupial.”

And he permitted himself to be sodded over.

If the reader knows what lesson is conveyed by this narrative, he knows—­just what the writer knows.