The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-04-24
A PRoTEAN ARTIST.
The FroS "A Versatile Humorist of
the Highest order.
Chester IN. " Letter in Chicago Inter.
Ocaan


Chester IN. W Letter in Chicago Inter
Ocean.
"It is nowhere ON record" said the ANA
teur naturalist, chat the allegation. the
funniest things frog has ever been de-
MED, although there is no evidence tnat
the man who made il really knew how
funny frog actually is. The probabilities
are that he was impressed with the frogs
comical pre-eminence solely by obserya-
tons of its external architecture as the
frog posed In picturesque maturity on a
bog. The observer noticed, of course, that
a frog is so built that all the neck it has
is the top of its head. He couldn't have
failed to observe, either, that the frog $
mouth begins where its shoulders leave
Off. If the appreciative observer didn't
note that if the frog doesn't watch out
when 1t sits down IL is apt to poke its eye
out with its big toe, he failed to take in
one of the frogs neatest bits of humor
And when ii dawned upon him, as dawn It
must have, that the frog wears the drum
of its ear on the outside Of its head, it be-
ing fastened to the gable end of the frogs
upper jaw, he was naturally. satisfied that
no further evidence was necessary and he
was ready to take the world into his con-
iidence and utter the famous declaration
about the frogs incontestable claim to be
placed on record as The funniest thing that
is. Yet the bright halo of droliery that sur
rounds the frog at ithis ripe period of its
existence is as funereal gloom when COM
pared to the humor of its callow days
This observer. whose sententious COM
mentary has passed into proverb,
shouldn't have been contentiwith the hu-
NOR of which the mere physical contour of
The completed frog is capable. lie should
have gone back to the time when the frog
was but a protoplastie atom, involuntarlly
cruising along the border of some marshy
pond, where the muskrat burrows among
the boys and the wild flag waves its lances
TO the passing breeze. He should have
sought out that glutinous molecule He
never would have suspected 1t of frog. He
never would have believed that one day
that inert globule would be bumped up ON
bog swapping at flies and vocing basso
profundo serenades to the Silly night But
that is just what that Flobule Is there for,
and If this insufficient Observer had only
known il and watched it grow up with the
country he would have seen how doubly
fortified against eavil he would have been
in declaring that frogs place is at the
mead OF all embodiment of humor animate
or inanimate, conscious or unconscious>
The frogs embryonic idea of fun is TO
do number or interesting lightning
changes. Its masterpiece as a molecular
comedian and its last act in that line of
business is to transform Itself into The
living likeness and granular structure of
mulberry. 1t is while making subaoue-
ously this horticultural display of itself
that the whimsical creature Is preparing
for one of its drolest surprises and il next
appears in the lively and grotesque char
acter of fish that has a mouth with rows
of teeth in il like a sheepshead's, two
other mouths, each like sucker's. the
tail of an eel nostrils threef times sas,rbis,
as any of its mouths, a pair of gills that
branch from its head like the antlers of
deer, the heart of fish and the dlges-
tive organs of a grasshopper. All three
of the frogs mouths are in a row at the
bottom of it's, chin, the one equipped with
teeth being in the middle of the row. This
screaming presentation is dear 20 the
proving small boy as the poliwog. II is
the frogs first ambitious attempt at be-
ing really funny, and ii is, apcinstantane-
Gus and .cyclonic success. 1t is followed.
in good time, by other changes In the
bill. First, the frog. in its character of
polliwog, calls in it's antler-like gills and
slows them away inside its head some
where. Then it springs a pair of legs on
the spectator. They sprout out from eacn
side of the frogs body, just aft OF the
spot where the gills soaked in, and the
one who has no idea yet how funny the