7.  The third distinction is that animals make no improvements; while the knowledge, and skill, and the success of man are perpetually on the increase.  Animals, in all their operations, follow the first impulse of nature or that instinct which God has implanted in them.  In all they do undertake, therefore, their works are more perfect and regular than those of man.

8.  But man, having been endowed with the faculty of thinking or reasoning about what he does, is enabled by patience and industry to correct the mistakes into which he at first falls, and to go on constantly improving.  A bird’s nest is, indeed, a perfect structure; yet the nest of a swallow of the nineteenth century is not at all more commodious or elegant than those that were built amid the rafters of Noah’s ark.  But if we compare the wigwam of the savage with the temples and palaces of ancient Greece and Rome, we then shall see to what man’s mistakes, rectified and improved upon, conduct him.

9.  “When the vast sun shall veil his golden light
    Deep in the gloom of everlasting night;
    When wild, destructive flames shall wrap the skies,
    When ruin triumphs, and when nature dies;
    Man shall alone the wreck of worlds survive;
    ’Mid falling spheres, immortal man shall live.” 
          
                                               —­Jane Taylor.

Definitions.—­2.  Dis-tinc’tion, a point of difference.  Im’ple-ments, utensils, tools.  Wigwam, an Indian hut. 3.  Bur’rows, holes in the earth where animals lodge. 4.  Dis-cus’sion, the act of arguing a point, debate. 5.  Me-dic’i-nal, healing. 8.  En-dowed’, furnished with any gift, quality, etc.  Fac’ul-ty, ability to act or perform.  Rec’ti-fied, corrected.

XCVI.  THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT.

John Godfrey Saxe (b. 1816, d.1887), an American humorist, lawyer, and journalist, was born at Highgate, Vt.  He graduated at Middlebury College in 1839; was admitted to the bar in 1843; and practiced law until 1850, when he became editor of the “Burlington Sentinel.”  In 1851, he was elected State’s attorney.  “Progress, a Satire, and Other Poems,” his first volume, was published in 1849, and several other volumes of great merit attest his originality.  For genial humor and good-natured satire, Saxe’s writings rank among the best of their kind, and are very popular.

1.  It was six men of Indostan,
     To learning much inclined,
   Who went to see the elephant,
     (Though all of them were blind,)
   That each by observation
     Might satisfy his mind.

2.  The first approached the elephant,
     And, happening to fall
   Against his broad and sturdy side,
     At once began to bawl: 
   “God bless me! but the elephant
     Is very like a wall!”

3.  The second, feeling of the tusk,
     Cried:  “Ha! what have we here,
   So very round, and smooth, and sharp? 
     To me ’t is very clear,
   This wonder of an elephant
     Is very like a spear!”