endeavor to wash something to eat out of it.  No; he was not at fault, altogether, for the mud in his tub.  Out in the Bear Swamp, the streams that wandered about under the great high-spreading gums, and lost their way in the shadows, were crystal-clear and pure; and out there it was intended that he should dwell, and in those sweet streams that he should wash.  But what a modicum of wit, of originality the little beast had, that, because he was born a washer, wash he must, though he washed in mud, nay, though he washed upon the upturned bottom of his empty tub!—­for this is what Mux did sometimes.

I never blamed Aunt Milly for insisting upon this rather ill-sounding name of “Mux” for the little coon.  She was standing by his cage, shortly after his arrival, watching him eat cabbage.  He washed every clean white piece of it in his oozy tub before tasting it, coating the bits over with mud as you do the lumps of fondant with chocolate in making “chocolate creams.”  Aunt Milly looked at him for some time with scornful face and finally exclaimed: 

“Umph!  Dat animile am a dumb beast shu’!  Rubbin’ dirt right inter clean cabbage!  Sich muxin’! mux, mux, mux!  Dat a coon?  Dat ain’t no coon.  Dat’s a mux!” And she scuffed off to the house, mumbling, “De muxinest thing I done evah seen.”  Hence his name.

If there is one sweetmeat sweeter than all others to a coon, it is a frog.  It was not mere chance that Mux was born in the edge of the Bear Swamp, close to the wide marshes that ran out to the river.  This was the great country of the frogs—­the milk-and-honey country to the ring-tailed family in the hollow gum.  But Mux had never tasted frog.  He had not been weaned when I kidnapped him.  One day, wishing to see if he knew what a frog was, I carelessly offered him a big spotted fellow that I had caught in the meadow.

Did he know a frog?  He fairly snatched the poor thing from me, killed it, and started around the cage with it in his mouth, dancing like a cannibal.  His long, serious face was more thoughtful and solemn, however, than usual.  I was puzzled.  I had heard of dancing at funerals.  Either this was such a dance, or else some wild orgy to propitiate the spirits that preside over the destiny of coons.

Throughout this gruesome rite Mux held the frog in his mouth, and I watched, expecting, hoping every moment that he would swallow it.  Suddenly he stopped, sat down by his tub, pulled some dead grass out of it, plunged the frog in, and began to scrub it—­began to scrub the frog in the oozy contents of that tub, when the poor amphibian had been soaking in spring-water ever since it was a tadpole!

No matter.  The frog must be washed.  And washed it was.  It was scoured first with all his might, then placed in the bottom of the tub, under water, held down by one fore paw, until the maniac could get in with his hind feet upon it, and then danced upon; from here it was laid upon the floor of the cage and kneaded until as limp as a lump of dough; then lifted daintily, it was shaken round and round in the water, rinsed and wrung, and minutely inspected, and—­swallowed.