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for this conundrum, I am convinced, is the ancestral wheeze. "Perhaps it's because you're a jackass to laugh so much," Elijah would say, severely. "No, you're wrong!" would scream that fatuous kingfisher. "It's because they think Jack—as good as any other name! Ha ha! How's that? Isn't Jackass good as his master?" and he would guffaw deliriously while Elijah sharpened his big beak. "H'm," Elijah would grunt, with savage calmness, when the laugh was over. "Just make another joke like that, will you?" And the unhappy jackass would have to save himself as best he might.

A conundrum.
Ha! Ha!
Another? Is he savage?

The laughing jackass is all very well as a chorus, but he can't sustain a separate low-comedy part. The raven can, the jackdaw and the magpie can, the jay can, and even the rook and the ordinary crow have their humoursome talents. The chaplain crow becomes a very passable Stiggins, under the influence of the sun, which acts as his pineapple rum. Hot sunshine opens the mouth of the chaplain crow, and causes a rolling of the head and eyes, suggestive of a lachrymose sermon; and a spasmodic croak that is an overcharged rant by itself. You grow more serious at each step nearer the chaplain crow on these occasions, and you pull up with a start at the thought of a collection. I am not sure that much of his distress is not caused by the laughing jackasses, who have an impious practice of laughing at their conundrum on Sunday. There is a temptation to call the three worst offenders among the jackasses Tom, and Bob, and Billy, and the chaplain crow Sir Macklin, by compliment or with apologies to the "Bab Ballads"; but, in good truth, there is no other name for the chaplain crow but Stiggins. His white choker is