A feeling of mirthfulness, which sometimes takes me on most inappropriate occasions, seized me, and I sat down on the ground, powerless at the moment when Carlo most needed help.  If I only could have got near enough, I would have put my foot on the freezer, and, taking hold of the dog’s tail, dislodged him instantly; but this I was not permitted to do.  At this stage of the disaster my neighbor appeared with a look of consternation, her cap-strings flying in the cold wind.  I tried to explain, but the aforesaid untimely hilarity hindered me.  All I could do was to point at the flying freezer and the adjoining dog and ask her to call off her freezer, and, with assumed indignation, demand what she meant by trying to kill my greyhound.

The poor dog’s every attempt at escape only wedged himself more thoroughly fast.  But after a while, in time to save the dog, though not to save the ice-cream, my neighbor and myself effected a rescue.  Edwin Landseer, the great painter of dogs and their friends, missed his best chance by not being there when the parishioner took hold of the freezer and the pastor seized the dog’s tail, and, pulling mightily in opposite directions, they each got possession of their own property.

Carlo was cured of his love for luxuries, and the sight of the freezer on the back steps till the day of his death would send him howling away.

Carlo found, as many people have found, that it is easier to get into trouble than to get out.  Nothing could be more delicious than while he was eating his way in, but what must have been his feelings when he found it impossible to get out!  While he was stealing the freezer the freezer stole him.

Lesson for dogs and men!  “Come in!” says the gray spider to the house-fly; “I have entertained a great many flies.  I have plenty of room, fine meals and a gay life.  Walk on this suspension bridge.  Give me your hand.  Come in, my sweet lady fly.  These walls are covered with silk, and the tapestry is gobelin.  I am a wonderful creature.  I have eight eyes, and of course can see your best interest.  Philosophers have written volumes about my antennae and cephalothorax.”  House-fly walks gently in.  The web rocks like a cradle in the breeze.  The house-fly feels honored to be the guest of such a big spider.  We all have regard for big bugs.  “But what is this?” cries the fly, pointing to a broken wing, “and this fragment of an insect’s foot.  There must have been a murder here!  Let me go back!” “Ha! ha!” says the spider, “the gate is locked, the drawbridge is up.  I only contracted to bring you in.  I cannot afford to let you out.  Take a drop of this poison, and it will quiet your nerves.  I throw this hook of a fang over your neck to keep you from falling off.”  Word went back to the house-fly’s family, and a choir of great green-bottled insects sang this psalm at the funeral: 

  “An unfortunate fly a-visiting went,
  And in a gossamer web found himself pent.”