The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1895-02-13
FABLES THAT NEVER DIE.
Folly of Being Afraid of Night Air-The
Shower of Frogs Story.

There is that well-fixed old legend
about the injurious property of night
air. says the Brooklyn Eagle. What a
lot of people are dying of consumption
because they will not let air into the
house after dark. 1t is night air, you
know, and that is-well. it is night air,
and somebody told your grandfather's
second Cousins wife's sister-in-law that
night air was unwholesome. So they
leave all the windows and breathe the
breaths of an entire family and the ex-
halations of closets and the gas of
furnaces and stoves all night, and get
up with headache, but with congratu-
lations that none of that dreadful air
from the hills and the woods and the
fields has got into the house. Ask
them how the cattle, that are out all
night breathing night air. keep so
healthy. Ask them what makes soldiers
and sailors aud prospectors and hunters
so big chested and hardy, living, as they
do, in the air all night as we'll as in the
day time. But you can't break up an
old lie with regiment Of troops or a
herd of cattle. Why, there used to be
lie, and it was even in the magazines,
to the effect that the moon made people
crazy, and that if you slept out in the
moonlight you would wake up in the
morning roaring lunatic. The man
who called a crazy person lunatic,
borrowing the innocent moon to coin a
word from, was perhaps responsible for
that. He never thought to look at the
effect of moonlit slumber on an army OF
watchman.
Every now and then we read reports
of shower of frogs or toads or snakes
or lizards or young alligators. But
these showers never occur near where
anybody lives. Since the resuscita.
ton of the Brooklyn Institute these
animals appear to know that if they
fall into the streets of this city they
will become subjects of scientific sur
veillance, and they have carefully re.
Trained from falling even in Prospect
Park.
The wheat grown from seeds pre-.
served for 5000 years and more in
mummy cases covers square miles Of
imagination-and the frogs that have
been imprisoned in granite or coal. deer
down in the hearts of mountains, fol
billions and billions of years-a couple
| of billions before frogs were created
| would be marshaled into a respectable
army. When he got into the granite the
granite was presumably white hot, but
the frog got himself crystalized in, just
the same, and when the chunk is blasted
he hops and starts for the nearest pond
as brisk as if he had only been locked
up over night.
Onco in while he gets into the
stomach of citizen, this frog does, and
h,cN in hot ctrsa ~hn1d
is taken by a snake which, resisting
air, plays around for months, now and
then coming up into the throat of his
host to suggest that it is dinner time
Ordinarily, snake eats only live food
but perhaps he accustoms himself tt
oysters if his keeper will considerably
| eat them.
The rustic occasionally looks at 8
cloudy sky, pierced by rays of the sur
that spread into a visible fan of light
and says: ITS goin' to rain. The
SUMS drawin' water" And he really
thinks it is water going up, instead O
light coming down. II it rains it is be
| cause the clouds are there, and it il
| about time to rain, not because the sur
is working as hard as usual for tht
evaporation of water on the surface o
the earth.
One might fill some columns abou
the divining rod that can find gold an6
silver and hasn't brought any of thu
countless millions of the late unlamentet
Kidd to light. and about honor among
thieves, and about the evils that befal
possessors of the opal. and about th'
Mapleton and some other ghosts, ant
about raising umbrellas on the stage ait
about thirteen people at the table, and
whole lot of other things, but it wouldn'
do any good.