THE HUMOURIST.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 138, 16 July 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE HUMOURIST.

MARK TWAIN ON ANTS. » Mark Twain, iu his recent work, tlie houses of the Black Forest, its streams, water-mills, and "wayside fixes, and suits, and Virgins; its human habitants, and other inhabitants. Of one its ‘other inhabitants,’ the ant, here isDU singular felicitous and amusing sketch : & Now and then, while we rest, we the laborious ant at his work. I nothing new in him—certainly nothing change my opinion of him. It seems to that in the matter of intellect the ant be a straugely overrated bird. During summers now I have watched him, when ought to have been in better business, have not yet come across a living ant seemed to have any more sense thau a deaß^B I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; have had no experience of those Swiss and African ones which vote, drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute aimßKl religion. Those particular ants may hew .< | the naturalists paint them, but I ain pH iL; suaded that tlio average ant is a sham, i admit his industry, of course ; he is a haajj working creature—when anybody is lookifa j —but his leather-headedness is the points. { make against him. He goes out foragiui he makes a capture, auil then what does lie/ do? Go home ? No; lie goes anywhere/ but home. He doesn’t know where home is. His home may he only three feet away ; nal matter he can’t find it. He makes hiBB capture, as I have said ; it is generally some- B thing which can be of no sort of use to him- I self or anybody else ; it is usually seven I times bigger than it ought to be ; he hunts I out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; I lie lifts it bodily up in the air by main force,j I and starts —not towards home, but in the ■ opposite direction ; not calmly and wisely,* I but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of ■ his strength ; lie fetches up against a pebble, fl and insted of going round it, he over it backwards, dragging his booty him, tumbles down ihe other side, jumps in a passion, kicks the dust off his moistens his hands, grabs his viciously, yanks it this way, then shoves it ahead of him a moment, tail and lugs after him another moment, madder and madder, then presently hoists into the air, and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction ; comes to a weed : i t never occurs to him to go round it. No ; he must climb it, and he does climb it, gitig his worthless property to the top which is as bright a thing to do as it be for me to carry a sack of Hour from Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple when he gets up there he finds it is not place ; takes a cursory glauce at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more—as usual in a new direction. At the end of Jialf-an- H hour he fetches up within six inches of place he started from, and lays his down. Meantime he has been over all ground for two yards around, and climbedJß| all the weeds amd pebbles he came Now he wipes the sweat from his brow,* I strokes his limbs, and then inarches aimlessly A offj in as violent a hurry as ever. He'iß traverses a good deal of zig-zag country, and |B by-aud-by stumbles on his same booty again. *B He does not remember to have ever seen before ; he looks round to see which is nofj^fl

the way home, grabs his bundle, and starts. He goes through the same adventures he had before ; finally stops to rest, and a friend!

comes along. Evidently the friend remarks that a last year’s grasshppper leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquired where he got it. Evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it ‘around here somewhere.’ Evidently the friend contracts to help him to freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly antic (pun not intentional), they take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg, and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions. Presently they take a rest, and confer together. They decide that something is wrong, they can’t make out what. They go at it again, just as before. Same result. Mutual reerxm-} nations follow. Evidently each accuses the K other of being an obstructionist. They warm ' up, and the dispute ends in a fight.. lock themselves together and chew each! other’s jaws for a while ; then the}' roll and{] tumble on the ground till one loses a horn or j leg, and has to haul off for repairs. TheyJ make up and go to work again in the samel old insane way, but the crippled ant is at a! disadvantage ; tug as he may, the other one f drags off the booty and him at the end of it. |l

Instead of giving up, lie hangs on, and gets his shins bruised against every obstruction that comes iu the way. By-aud-by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it originally lay. The two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtful! 3% and decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after all, and then each starts ofl’in a different direction to see if he can’t find an old nail or something else that is heav3' enough to> aflbrd entertainment and at the same time valuless enough to make an ant want to own it.