MR. SALA AND THE GOOSE.

Bruce Herald, Volume II, Issue 46, 23 February 1865, Page 9

MR. SAL A AND THE GOOSE.

The following' ludicrous episode is added by Mr Sala to Sis description of " Niagra

in Winter — after the Sunshine." As I stood gazing- on the sun and the rainbow, and the glittering- spray and che sparkling snow, and as the constant roar of the cataract had become to me, through its even monotony of sonorous continuity, quite soft and subdued, the very oddest, the very absurdest, the most incongruous thing it is possible to conceive, happened. lam almost ashamed to set it down here. I was invoking Phoebus Apollo — I was crying* " Evoe !" or " Mehecle !" — when an abominably ludicrous thing happened. It was in this wise. Miv Sol Davis is a thrifty man, and keeps live stock. From the rear of his premises there came gravely and consequentially waddling towards me a certain domestic bird. This bird, it may be, flattered himself that his plumage was white ; but contrasted with the virgin snow over which he sacrilegiously waddled, he had a dirty, tawny hue. And the varlet thought, no doubt, that he had red legs. Red ! These, and his splay webfeet, were of a dingy cinnabar tint, like unto the worn out jacket of an untidy militiaman. His bill was unbearable. He was the ugliest biped I ever set eyes iipon ; and yet I dare say Mr Sol Davis thought him in the plumpest of condition, and intended to send him presently into the States, with a view to the Christmas market. There, the truth must out. He was a goose, and the beast of a bird waddled to the brink of the Table Rock, and. stood beside me gazing* out upon Niagara. It would be a mean and paltry thing I knew, for a strong man to kick a goose over a precipice. It would have been a cruel and dishonest thing to steal Mr Sol Davis's propert}"-, or wring its neck. Yet something must be done, I felt. Why didn't he fly away 1 Why didn't he waddle back ? No ; there he remained ruminating*, and occasionally gobbling- to himself. Perhaps he was indulging in aspirations that the sage and onion crap had given out, and that he would not be roasted until next Thanksgiving- Day. I told him savagely to get out of that. He turned his bill and his eye upwards to me, stood on one leg-, and hissed slightly, as though to say, ' Have I not as much right here as you, brother ? What do you think of the Falls, anyway '? As for me, lam blase. lam a goose. Men may come and men may go, but I and the Falls go on forever. More rain drops from the heavens, and sinks into the mountains, and gushes from the source, and feeds the lakes, and flushes the river, and rushes from Erie to Ontario, and tumbles over these rocks, and is shattered into spray and becomes vapor, and in time g-athers ag-ain in clouds, and falls once more in rain. More goslings chip from the shell, more mother g-eese drive off with strong wing- and angry hiss the barn door cat, more geese are baked and roasted, or set before fires, or are caged in coops and crammed that their livers may swell, and the fatty degeneration be made into pies. lam a goose, and have gone on for thousands of years. And you brother ? I was in Noah's Ark. I saved the Roman Capitol. I once laid golden eggs. The clodhopper thought he had killed me," but here lam again. How old is the world, and for how many thousands of years has this cataract been roaring, and I, or my brothers who are Me, hissing and gobbling on the edge of the precipice ?*' I declined to answer the implied questions he propounded. I left the abominable brute in deepest dudgeon ; and for my part I don't see anything cruel in the process of preparing pates de foie gras, or plucking gees alive.