Ambrose Bierce - Fantastic Fables

He was a Judge of an Appellate Court.

One pleasant day in the latter part of eternity, as the Shades of all the great writers were reposing upon beds of asphodel and moly in the Elysian fields, each happy in hearing from the lips of the others nothing but copious quotation from his own works (for so Jove had kindly bedeviled their ears), there came in among them with triumphant mien a Shade whom none knew. She (for the newcomer showed such evidences of sex as cropped hair and a manly stride) took a seat in their midst, and smiling a superior smile explained:

“After centuries of oppression I have wrested my rights from the grasp of the jealous gods. On earth I was the Poetess of Reform, and sang to inattentive ears. Now for an eternity of honour and glory.”

But it was not to be so, and soon she was the unhappiest of mortals, vainly desirous to wander again in gloom by the infernal lakes. For Jove had not bedeviled her ears, and she heard from the lips of each blessed Shade an incessant flow of quotation from his own works. Moreover, she was denied the happiness of repeating her poems. She could not recall a line of them, for Jove had decreed that the memory of them abide in Pluto’s painful domain, as a part of the apparatus.

The republic of Madagonia had been long and well represented at the court of the King of Patagascar by an officer called a Dazie, but one day the Madagonian Parliament conferred upon him the superior rank of Dandee. The next day after being apprised of his new dignity he hastened to inform the King of Patagascar.

“Ah, yes, I understand,” said the King; “you have been promoted and given increased pay and allowances. There was an appropriation?”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“And you have now two heads, have you not?”

“Oh, no, your Majesty—only one, I assure you.”

“Indeed? And how many legs and arms?”

“Two of each, Sire—only two of each.”

“And only one body?”

“Just a single body, as you perceive.”

Thoughtfully removing his crown and scratching the royal head, the monarch was silent a moment, and then he said:

“I fancy that appropriation has been misapplied. You seem to be about the same kind of idiot that you were before.”

A Pious Person who had overcharged his paunch with dead bird by way of attesting his gratitude for escaping the many calamities which Heaven had sent upon others, fell asleep at table and dreamed. He thought he lived in a country where turkeys were the ruling class, and every year they held a feast to manifest their sense of Heaven’s goodness in sparing their lives to kill them later. One day, about a week before one of these feasts, he met the Supreme Gobbler, who said:

“You will please get yourself into good condition for the Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Yes, your Excellency,” replied the Pious Person, delighted, “I shall come hungry, I assure you. It is no small privilege to dine with your Excellency.”

The Supreme Gobbler eyed him for a moment in silence; then he said:

“As one of the lower domestic animals, you cannot be expected to know much, but you might know something. Since you do not, you will permit me to point out that being asked to dinner is one thing; being asked to dine is another and a different thing.”

With this significant remark the Supreme Gobbler left him, and thenceforward the Pious Person dreamed of himself as white meat and dark until rudely awakened by decapitation.

The two brightest lights of Theosophy being in the same place at once in company with the Ashes of Madame Blavatsky, an Inquiring Soul thought the time propitious to learn something worth while. So he sat at the feet of one awhile, and then he sat awhile at the feet of the other, and at last he applied his ear to the keyhole of the casket containing the Ashes of Madame Blavatsky. When the Inquiring Soul had completed his course of instruction he declared himself the Ahkoond of Swat, fell into the baleful habit of standing on his head, and swore that the mother who bore him was a pragmatic paralogism. Wherefore he was held in high reverence, and when the two other gentlemen were hanged for lying the Theosophists elected him to the leadership of their Disastral Body, and after a quiet life and an honourable death by the kick of a jackass he was reincarnated as a Yellow Dog. As such he ate the Ashes of Madame Blavatsky, and Theosophy was no more.

One day an Opossum who had gone to sleep hanging from the highest branch of a tree by the tail, awoke and saw a large Snake wound about the limb, between him and the trunk of the tree.

“If I hold on,” he said to himself, “I shall be swallowed; if I let go I shall break my neck.”

But suddenly he bethought himself to dissemble.

“My perfected friend,” he said, “my parental instinct recognises in you a noble evidence and illustration of the theory of development. You are the Opossum of the Future, the ultimate Fittest Survivor of our species, the ripe result of progressive prehensility—all tail!”

But the Snake, proud of his ancient eminence in Scriptural history, was strictly orthodox, and did not accept the scientific view.

Seventy-Five Men presented themselves before the President of the Humane Society and demanded the great gold medal for life-saving.

“Why, yes,” said the President; “by diligent effort so many men must have saved a considerable number of lives. How many did you save?”

“Seventy-five, sir,” replied their Spokesman.

“Ah, yes, that is one each—very good work—very good work, indeed,” the President said. “You shall not only have the Society’s great gold medal, but its recommendation for employment at the various life-boat stations along the coast. But how did you save so many lives?”

The Spokesman of the Men replied:

“We are officers of the law, and have just returned from the pursuit of two murderous outlaws.”

A Distinguished Naturalist was travelling in Australia, when he saw a Kangaroo in session and flung a stone at it. The Kangaroo immediately adjourned, tracing against the sunset sky a parabolic curve spanning seven provinces, and evanished below the horizon. The Distinguished Naturalist looked interested, but said nothing for an hour; then he said to his native Guide:

“You have pretty wide meadows here, I suppose?”

“No, not very wide,” the Guide answered; “about the same as in England and America.”

After another long silence the Distinguished Naturalist said:

“The hay which we shall purchase for our horses this evening—I shall expect to find the stalks about fifty feet long. Am I right?”

“Why, no,” said the Guide; “a foot or two is about the usual length of our hay. What can you be thinking of?”

The Distinguished Naturalist made no immediate reply, but later, as in the shades of night they journeyed through the desolate vastness of the Great Lone Land, he broke the silence:

“I was thinking,” he said, “of the uncommon magnitude of that grasshopper.”

An Author saw a Labourer hammering stones into the pavement of a street, and approaching him said:

“My friend, you seem weary. Ambition is a hard taskmaster.”

“I’m working for Mr. Jones, sir,” the Labourer replied.

“Well, cheer up,” the Author resumed; “fame comes at the most unexpected times. To-day you are poor, obscure, and disheartened, and to-morrow the world may be ringing with your name.”