“Old Bill” Suggests—

Many years ago George Thomas Lanigan, author or immortal verses on the Akhoond of Swat (a real person dwelling adjaacent to the Persian gulf), also wrote some eastern fables.

A kind-hearted she-elephant, he said, was walking through the jungle one day. The elephant heedlessly set foot on a partridge, which she crushed to death within a few inches of the ground nest containing its little brood.

“Poor little things,” wept the she-elephant. “I have been a mother myself and my affection shall atone for the fatal consequences of my neglect. I shall take the place of the mother partridge.”

So saying, she sat down on the nest.

Lanagan said that showed what home is without a mother and that not every person is fit to be intrusted with the care of an orphan asylum. It reminds us of governmental three-letter alphabet soup, but which one of the various three-letter combinations we have not yet decided. In its kindly intention, that is. The outcome, of course, will be more successful.

OLD BILL.