A famishing traveller who had run down a salamander, made a fire, and
laid him alive upon the hot coals to cook. Wearied with the pursuit
which had preceded his capture, the animal at once composed himself,
and fell into a refreshing sleep. At the end of a half-hour, the man,
stirred him with a stick, remarking:
"I say!--wake up and begin toasting, will you? How long do you mean to
keep dinner waiting, eh?"
"Oh, I beg you will not wait for me," was the yawning reply. "If you
are going to stand upon ceremony, everything will get cold. Besides, I
have dined. I wish, by-the-way, you would put on some more fuel; I
think we shall have snow."
"Yes," said the man, "the weather is like yourself--raw, and
exasperatingly cool. Perhaps this will warm you." And he rolled a
ponderous pine log atop of that provoking reptile, who flattened out,
and "handed in his checks."
The moral thus doth glibly run--
A cause its opposite may brew;
The sun-shade is unlike the sun,
The plum unlike the plumber, too.
A salamander underdone
His impudence may overdo.