catholicity of taste. I eat grapes and pig's feet, snails and fishes, proteins and carbohydrates. Also I am fond of gooseliver.
THE SNAKE: I eat only meat and fish and fowl. Once I ate a little brown boy. Shall I tell you about that?
ETAOIN: If you wish.
THE SNAKE: Well, my geography is not good, but it was on an island somewhere in some ocean, and it took a long time to swim there, and I swim fast. Notice how my tail is paddle-shaped. Well, I arrived at this island towards dawn of the seventh day; and there I decided to change my skin. It should have been changed days before, but one can't moult in mid-ocean. So I landed on a pretty little beach, steering through some treacherous rocks and breakers and only barely avoiding a dangerous stretch of shoal water. Out on the sand I glided, all eighty feet of me — at least, that is my length according to Doctor Lao, and he understands such matters — and I headed for some thick, trashy bushes I saw up on the bank a way. I tell you it is a bother to crawl about on land after swimming in the ocean. Well, I got in amongst the trashy bushes, sloughed and plowed my head around, and finally unhooked the epidermis from my upper and lower jaws. Then I snagged the ends of the old hide onto the bushes, and after that it was merely routine stuff wriggling out of the rest of it. The old skin bunches up under one's throat, you know, and gradually works back down off the rest of the body; and the faster you shag around in the bushes, the faster the old hide comes off. Well, I chased around and around, and off it came, and I was glad to see the last of it; it had become very uncomfortable the last day or so.
Now I have observed that every time I change my skin, immediately after the shedding I become hungry. So, gleaming and glistening and shining and sparkling and sleek and colorful in my new skin, I started looking about the island for something to eat. I went over a hill and through a forest and across a valley and never saw anything at all. Then I came to a river and swam up into the current. And it was a small river and a wiggly one, and when I would look behind me, all I could see would be myself disappearing around some bend. Well, I went up that river; and I tell you, all the little fishes in it thought their millennium had come.
Pretty soon I came to a town, a town of mud shacks and darky people. They were all loafing around near the river bank, listening to one of their medicine men tell what I doubt not was a most atrocious lie. I came sluicing up near them; they screamed and fled, and like chickens they fled in circles; and though you may not believe it, some of them actually hopped in the river and tried to swim across.
And I watched them and looked them over and picked out the one I wanted for a meal. I chose a little coffee-colored fat boy. Ah, I'll wager his mother had fed him on duck eggs and roast bananas he was so fat. Why, his belly rolled out so far he couldn't see his own knees.
Anyway, he chose to climb a tree. You know how those natives climb trees: tie their hind feet together and go up a slanting trunk with silly froghops. That's what this brat did. I let him get clear to the top, up among the fronds and coconuts. He looked down at me like a monkey, and the way he bawled one would have thought something terrible was about to happen to him.
Well, sir, I reaches up real easy-like, you know, easing up along the trunk, slow, slow; my hide rippling and undulating, as with soft efforts I give my head more altitude. And my old tongue what scares folks so — for they think it's a stinger — well, sir, my old tongue was just in and out all the time, giving it hell, I tell you. Gawd! I thought that lil nigger would bust his voice box when he seen my old tongue a-lickin' up at him, giving it hell thataway.
Well, sir, I snags him by the leg; an', Jesus, did he bawl then! But I gets a good
THE SNAKE: I eat only meat and fish and fowl. Once I ate a little brown boy. Shall I tell you about that?
ETAOIN: If you wish.
THE SNAKE: Well, my geography is not good, but it was on an island somewhere in some ocean, and it took a long time to swim there, and I swim fast. Notice how my tail is paddle-shaped. Well, I arrived at this island towards dawn of the seventh day; and there I decided to change my skin. It should have been changed days before, but one can't moult in mid-ocean. So I landed on a pretty little beach, steering through some treacherous rocks and breakers and only barely avoiding a dangerous stretch of shoal water. Out on the sand I glided, all eighty feet of me — at least, that is my length according to Doctor Lao, and he understands such matters — and I headed for some thick, trashy bushes I saw up on the bank a way. I tell you it is a bother to crawl about on land after swimming in the ocean. Well, I got in amongst the trashy bushes, sloughed and plowed my head around, and finally unhooked the epidermis from my upper and lower jaws. Then I snagged the ends of the old hide onto the bushes, and after that it was merely routine stuff wriggling out of the rest of it. The old skin bunches up under one's throat, you know, and gradually works back down off the rest of the body; and the faster you shag around in the bushes, the faster the old hide comes off. Well, I chased around and around, and off it came, and I was glad to see the last of it; it had become very uncomfortable the last day or so.
Now I have observed that every time I change my skin, immediately after the shedding I become hungry. So, gleaming and glistening and shining and sparkling and sleek and colorful in my new skin, I started looking about the island for something to eat. I went over a hill and through a forest and across a valley and never saw anything at all. Then I came to a river and swam up into the current. And it was a small river and a wiggly one, and when I would look behind me, all I could see would be myself disappearing around some bend. Well, I went up that river; and I tell you, all the little fishes in it thought their millennium had come.
Pretty soon I came to a town, a town of mud shacks and darky people. They were all loafing around near the river bank, listening to one of their medicine men tell what I doubt not was a most atrocious lie. I came sluicing up near them; they screamed and fled, and like chickens they fled in circles; and though you may not believe it, some of them actually hopped in the river and tried to swim across.
And I watched them and looked them over and picked out the one I wanted for a meal. I chose a little coffee-colored fat boy. Ah, I'll wager his mother had fed him on duck eggs and roast bananas he was so fat. Why, his belly rolled out so far he couldn't see his own knees.
Anyway, he chose to climb a tree. You know how those natives climb trees: tie their hind feet together and go up a slanting trunk with silly froghops. That's what this brat did. I let him get clear to the top, up among the fronds and coconuts. He looked down at me like a monkey, and the way he bawled one would have thought something terrible was about to happen to him.
Well, sir, I reaches up real easy-like, you know, easing up along the trunk, slow, slow; my hide rippling and undulating, as with soft efforts I give my head more altitude. And my old tongue what scares folks so — for they think it's a stinger — well, sir, my old tongue was just in and out all the time, giving it hell, I tell you. Gawd! I thought that lil nigger would bust his voice box when he seen my old tongue a-lickin' up at him, giving it hell thataway.
Well, sir, I snags him by the leg; an', Jesus, did he bawl then! But I gets a good
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