sult me by thinking that cracked-voiced thing my son?” and he puffed himself up to the shape of a ball.
“Then how am I to know your son?”
“Why, look you,” pumped forth the toad with stateliness, “he is remarkably handsome—ahem! he is the image of me: has goggle eyes, a blotched back, and a great white belly!”
Now, could any congregation hear this story from the pulpit without laughing? It is sufficiently piquant, and would go home to many parents present.
There is a capital story which I believe originated with Raulin, but which has since been versified by Southey, and even dramatized; but it may be questioned whether any modern author has told it with any thing like the naïveté of the original.
It occurs in the third sermon on widowhood. I give it in the Latin of the period.
“Dicatur de quâdam viduâ, quod venit ad curatum suum (à son curé), quærens ab eo consilium, si deberet iterum maritari, et allegabat quod erat sine adjutorio, et quod habebat servum optimum et peritum in arte mariti sui.
“Tunc curatus: ‘Bene, accipite eum.’
“E contrario illa dicebat: ‘Sed periculum est accipere illum, ne de servo meo faciam dominum.’
“Tunc curatus dixit: ‘Bene, nolite eum accipere.’
“Ait illa: ‘Quid faciam? non possum sustinere pondus illud quod sustinebat maritus meus, nisi unum habeam.’
“Tunc curatus dixit: ‘Bene, habeatis eum.’
“At illa: ‘Sed si malus esset, et vellet mea disperdere et usurpare?’
