I took him to my
room, and placed him in a water-tight box, in which I fashioned an
artificial bog, in the hope that he would confirm my testimony by his
piping. The second evening, as I sat in my room, poring over the
recitations of the morrow, he lifted up his voice, loud, shrill, and
clear, as when singing in his native marsh. I hurried, in triumph, to
the learned disputants about his identity, and in their presence, he
furnished unanswerable evidence that the peeper was a frog, and not a
newt. I was complimented by both the learned pundits, as though I had
added a great item to the aggregate of human knowledge."
"You _did_ do a great thing, my friend," said Spalding, "you solved a
mystery about which men, wise in the learning of the books, had
perhaps been disputing for centuries. What are the peepers? asked the
naturalist, who listened to their piping notes from the marshy places
in the spring time. It was a matter of small practical importance,
what they were. Still it was a question which MIND wanted to have
solved. Its solution would do no great amount of good to the world.
But then it was a mystery which it was the business of mind to lay
bare; and what more has science done in tracing the history and
progress of this earth of ours, as written upon the rocks, among which
geology has been so long delving? 'What are the peepers?' asked the
naturalist.
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