Yet the blackbird is older even than I. Go listen to her
story. She excels me, in both talk and fact."
And the blackbird opened its orange-colored bill, and answered
proudly:
"Do you see this flinty rock, on which I am sitting? Once it was so
huge that three hundred yoke of oxen could hardly move it. Yet, today,
it hardly more than affords me room to roost on.
"What made it so small, do you ask?
"Well, all I have clone to wear it away, has been to wipe my beak on
it, every night, before I go to sleep, and in the morning to brush it
with the tips of my wing."
Even Puck, fairy though he was, was astonished at this. But the
blackbird added:
"Go to the toad, that blinks its eye under the big rock yonder. His
age is greater than mine."
The toad was half asleep when Puck came, but it opened with alertness,
its beautiful round bright eyes, set in a rim of gold. Then Puck asked
the question: "Oh, thou that carriest a jewel in thy head, are there
any things alive that are older than thou art?"
"That, I could not be sure of, especially if as many false things are
told about them, as are told about me; but when I was a tadpole in the
pond, that old hag of an owl was still hooting away, in the treetops,
scaring children, as in ages gone.
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