by my neighbour Habakkuk Sloansure, Esq., the president of our bank, whose opinion in the practical affairs of life has great weight with me, as I have generally found it to be justified by the event, and whose counsel, had I followed it, would have saved me from an unfortunate investment of a considerable part of the painful economies of half a century in the Northwest-Passage Tunnel.  After a somewhat animated discussion with this gentleman a few days since, I expanded, on the audi alteram partem principle, something which he happened to say by way of illustration, into the following fable.

FESTINA LENTE

Once on a time there was a pool
Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool
And spotted with cow-lilies garish,
Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. 
Alders the creaking redwings sink on,
Tussocks that house blithe Bob o’ Lincoln
Hedged round the unassailed seclusion,
Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian;
And many a moss-embroidered log,
The watering-place of summer frog,
Slept and decayed with patient skill,
As watering-places sometimes will.

Now in this Abbey of Theleme,
Which realized the fairest dream
That ever dozing bull-frog had,
Sunned on a half-sunk lily-pad,
There rose a party with a mission
To mend the polliwogs’ condition,
Who notified the selectmen
To call a meeting there and then. 
‘Some kind of steps,’ they said, ’are needed;
They don’t come on so fast as we did: 
Let’s dock their tails; if that don’t make ’em
Frogs by brevet, the Old One take ’em! 
That boy, that came the other day
To dig some flag-root down this way,
His jack-knife left, and ’tis a sign
That Heaven approves of our design: 
’Twere wicked not to urge the step on,
When Providence has sent the weapon.’

Old croakers, deacons of the mire,
That led the deep batrachian choir,
Uk!  Uk!  Caronk! with bass that might
Have left Lablache’s out of sight,
Shook nobby heads, and said, ’No go! 
You’d better let ’em try to grow: 
Old Doctor Time is slow, but still
He does know how to make a pill.’

But vain was all their hoarsest bass,
Their old experience out of place,
And spite of croaking and entreating,
The vote was carried in marsh-meeting.

‘Lord knows,’ protest the polliwogs,
’We’re anxious to be grown-up frogs;
But don’t push in to do the work
Of Nature till she prove a shirk;
’Tis not by jumps that she advances,
But wins her way by circumstances;
Pray, wait awhile, until you know
We’re so contrived as not to grow;
Let Nature take her own direction,
And she’ll absorb our imperfection;
You mightn’t like ’em to appear with,
But we must have the things to steer with.’