THE FROG FAMILY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 218, 3 December 1927, Page 27 (Supplement)

THE FROG FAMILY

The Frog family had found a. nouderful new home in a big oblong pone Slaving emigrated there from th* squashiest of little muddy pool*, where, with the growing thickness of the weeds and the increasing number of tadpoles, there was hardly room to turn round. It 11 began by Tommy Frog going for an evening hop in a beautiful rose garden. He had just hopped out on to the garden path when, to his astonishment, he found spread out before him a large, glistening pond of water. There were some rhodendron bushes at th** edge of it and they were all reflected in the clear, calm surface. “Why,” said Tommy, ’‘this mast ha the Atlantic Ocean.” He went back to tell the Frog family, and they r.ll came to live there. But no sooner had they settl.-d down than a strange thing happened Tommy was sitting on the bed of the pond, making up a new song, when suddenly the water began moving about him, and slowly but surety becoming less and less. Hopping out on to the bank, lie stared and stared at th*- pond. And at one end of it he suddenly caught sight of the meaning of it all. Thenwas a. hole in the hard whit© stufi of which the buttom of tills wonderful Atlantic Ocean pond of his was made, and through this all the water was vanishing like magic. He sat an«l watched, and waited until the place was almost as dry as if there had never been any water in it at all. All the frogs were out on the bank, or hopping about on the hard white stuff, looking as miserable as they felt, when down the garden path came two big men with brooms and long things with handles. They stepped into the empty pond, and began brushing and cleaning and clearing out the place, until you would not have known it could ever have been the once-beautifu! shining home of the happy Frog family, who at the moment had taken themselves away to hide in the bushes. Of course you can imagine that after the men had gone the frogs wen just as puzzled as ever to know what to do, for the pond was quite dry. And then at last, after the frogs had crept about miserably among the rhododendrons bushes and the roses for some days, feeling very thirsty and bored, they suddenly saw a little stream of water begin to trickle slowly into the pond, and slowly, too, the hard, dried-up floor began to fill again with wonderful clear water, which gleamed and glistened in the sun. And then, next day, a very extraordinary thing happened. The frogs had settled down again quite comfort ably in their new home, when there was a terrific hullabaloo around the pond. It seemed to them as though an army of people was collected close to them on the grass, all talking together. By getting to the shallow edge of the pond the frogs could see what they were like. They did not seem to have on the usual sort of clothes that humans wear, for they were pale pink nearly all over, and they seemed to have long pink arms and long pink legs—all except one. who was dressed like an ordinary human, and was bigger than the other*. Those in pink were standing in a row, and suddenly the one who was dressed like an ordinary human shouted out two words. In one moment the pink creatures were kicking and splashing their long pink legs and their long pink arms about as r hough the Atlantic Ocean belonged to them entirely, and there were no frogs in the world. It did not l«J*t very long, for soon the ordinary human shouted again, and they scrambled out as quickly as they had plunged in. • But it had been quite enough for | the frogs. “If this sort of thing is i going to happen to our happy home. | we might just as well never have left our muddy pool.” they said: “but who j and what are they, and where did such people come from who can dive like. I frogs?” Then an old frog, who had been very silent, suddenly threw light on the whole matter. “This,” said he. "is a swimming bath belonging to a . boys’ school, a place where they teach them much wisdom, and also how to : dive like frogs and swim like tadpoles. And the wisdom I have learned I would teach you, my young and foolish broI thers, is this: If you leave a pool for ■ the ocean, it does not follow that you j leave your troubles.”