THE BOY THE POODLE AND THE BEETLE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4825, 8 September 1876, Page 3

THE BOY THE POODLE AND THE BEETLE.

The minister gave out his text and droned alongmonotonously through an argument which was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod. Presently Tom bethought himself of a treasure he had, and got it out. It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws—a " pinchbug" he called it. It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, and the beetle went floundering into the aisle, and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth, The beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it, but it was safe out of his reach. Other people, uninterested in the sermon, found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle ; the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize ; walked around it; smelt of it from a safe distance, walked around it again; grew bolder and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip, and made a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another ; began to enjoy the diversion ; Bubsided to his stomaeh with the beetle between his paws, and continued his experiments ; grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched .the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked foolish, and probably felt so ; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on it again ; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his forepaws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears napped again. But he grew tired once more after a while ; tried to amuse himself with a fly, but found no relief ; followed an ant round, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that ; yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it ! Then there was a wild yelp of agony, and the poodle went Bailing up the aisle ; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in front ot the altar, he flew down the other aisle ; he crossed before the doors ; he clamored up the homestretch ; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course and sprang into its master's lap : he flung it out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned jvway and died in the distance. By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced. Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some satisfaction about divine service when there wa a bit of variety in it. He had but one mailing thought ; he was wiling that the dog should play with his pinch-bug, but he did not think it was upright in him to carry it off.—Mark Twain.