THE DONKEY THAT LOVED A STAR

‘That is how the donkey tells his love!’ I said one day, with intent to be funny, as the prolonged love-whoop of a distant donkey was heard in the land.

‘Don’t be too ready to laugh at donkeys,’ said my friend.  ‘For,’ he continued, ’even donkeys have their dreams.  Perhaps, indeed, the most beautiful dreams are dreamed by donkeys.’

‘Indeed,’ I said, ’and now that I think of it, I remember to have said that most dreamers are donkeys, though I never expected so scientific a corroboration of a fleeting jest.’

Now, my friend is an eminent scientist and poet in one, a serious combination; and he took my remarks with seriousness at once scientific and poetic.

‘Yes,’ he went on, ’that is where you clever people make a mistake.  You think that because a donkey has only two vowel-sounds wherewith to express his emotions, he has no emotions to express.  But let me tell you, sir ...’

But here we both burst out laughing—­

‘You Golden Ass!’ I said,’take a munch of these roses; perhaps they will restore you.’

‘No,’ he resumed, ’I am quite serious.  I have for many years past made a study of donkeys—­high-stepping critics call it the study of Human Nature—­however, it’s the same thing—­and I must say that the more I study them the more I love them.  There is nothing so well worth studying as the misunderstood, for the very reason that everybody thinks he understands it.  Now, to take another instance, most people think they have said the last word on a goose when they have called it “a goose"!—­but let me tell you, sir ...’

But here again we burst out laughing—­

‘Dear goose of the golden eggs,’ I said, ’pray leave to discourse on geese to-night—­though lovely and pleasant would the discourse be;—­to-night I am all agog for donkeys.’

‘So be it,’ said my friend,’ and if that be so, I cannot do better than tell you the story of the donkey that loved a star—­keeping for another day the no less fascinating story of the goose that loved an angel.’

By this time I was, appropriately, all ears.

‘Well,’ he once more began, ’there was once a donkey, quite an intimate friend of mine—­and I have no friend of whom I am prouder—­who was unpractically fond of looking up at the stars.  He could go a whole day without thistles, if night would only bring him stars.  Of course he suffered no little from his fellow-donkeys for this curious passion of his.  They said well that it did not become him, for indeed it was no little laughable to see him gazing so sentimentally at the remote and pitiless heavens.  Donkeys who belonged to Shakespeare Societies recalled the fate of Bottom, the donkey who had loved a fairy; but our donkey paid little heed.  There is perhaps only one advantage in being a donkey—­namely, a hide impervious to criticism.  In our donkey’s case it was rather a dream that