Facts Not Fables Author:Charles Williams Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GRASSHOPPER. WHAT IS EVIL MAY EE I.IKE WHAT 18 OOOD. " One afternoon," says Waterton, " not far from Monteiro, six or seven blackbirds, with a white sp... more »ot betwixt the shoulders, were making a noise, and passing to and fro on the lower branches of a tree in an abandoned, weed-grown, orange orchard. In the long grass underneath the tree, apparently a pale green grasshopper was fluttering, as though it had got entangled in it. When you once fancy that the thing you are looking at is really what you take it for, themore you look at it, the more you are convinced it is so. In the present case, this was a grasshopper beyond all doubt, and nothing more remained to be done but to wait in patience till it had settled, in order that you might run no risk of breaking its legs in attempting to lay hold of it while it was fluttering—it still kept fluttering; and having quietly approached it, intending to make sure of it, behold, the head of a large rattle - snake appeared in the grass close by: an instantaneous spring backwards prevented fatal consequences. What had been taken for a grasshopper was, in fact, the elevated rattle of the snake, in the act of announcing that he was quite prepared, though unwilling, to make a sure and deadly spring. He shortly after passed slowly from under the orange - tree to the neighbouring wood on the side of a hill; and as he moved over a place bare of grass and weeds, he appeared to be about eight feet long! MORAL. Appearances are deceitful. Poisonous berries often look tempting—ice, when it sometimes seems sound, if ventured upon, will break, and let him who is daring into the waters—and " wine, when it giveth its colour in the cup, at the last biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." It was " when Eve saw that the tree was pleasan...« less