 Well, to you know, Don Marquis does not believe in reincarnation. He does not believe in the transmigration of souls. He obviously hasn't had the same experiences that I have. A robin said to an angle worm as he ate him, I'm sorry, but a bird has to live somehow. The worm, being slow-witted, could not gather his descent into a wisecrack and retort. He was affectionately swallowed before he could turn a phrase. By the time he had reflected long enough to say, but why must the bird live? He felt the beginnings of a gradual change overtaking him. Some new and disintegrating influence was stealing along him from his positive to his negative pole. And he did not have the mental stamina of a Jonah to resist the insidious process of assimilation, which comes like a thief in the night. Evens and fish hooks, he exclaimed. I am losing my personal identity as a worm. That's wrong. My individuality is melting away. So help me. I am thinking like a robin and not like a worm any longer. I still do not understand what my mentality, why a robin must live, and yet I soon into a condition of belief. Yes, yes, that is my dogma, and I shouted, a robin must live. Amen. Said a beetle who had preceded him into the interior. That is the way I feel myself. Is it not wonderful when one arrives at the place that he can resignedly? Nay, even with gladness, recognize that it's a far, far better thing to be merged harmoniously with the cosmic all. And this harmonious situation in his midst so affected the marauding robin that he perched upon a blooming twig and sang until the blossoms shook with ecstasy. He sang, I have a good digestion. And there is a God after all, which I was wicked enough to doubt yesterday when it rained. Breakfast, breakfast, I am full of breakfast. And they are at breakfast in heaven. They breakfast in heaven all swell with the world. So intent was this pious and murderous robin on his own sweet song. He did not see Mehidebel the cat creeping toward him. She pounced just as he had extended his larynx in a melodious burst of Thanksgiving. And he went the way of all flesh, fish, and good red herring. Proud Mehidebel, licking the last feather from her whiskers. Was that not a beautiful song he was singing just before I took him to my bosom? They breakfast in heaven all swell with the world. And even yet his song echoes in the haunted woodland of my midriff. Peace and joy in the world and over all the private and skies. How beautiful is the universe when something digestible meets with an ego digestion. How sweet the embrace when Adam rushes to the arms of waiting Adam. And they dance together, skimming with fairy feet along a tide of gastric juices. Oh, feline cosmos, you are made for cats. And in the spring, oh, cosmic thing, I'll dine and dance with you. I shall creep through yonder tall grass to see if Perid ventures some silly fledgling thrushes, be not floundering therein. I have a gusto this morning. I have a hunger. I have a yearning to hear from my stomach still more music in accord with the mystic chanting of the spheres of the stars that sang together in the dawn of creation prophesying food for me. I have a faith that Providence has hidden for me in yonder tall grass still more ornithological delicatessen. Oh, gaily let me strangle what is gaily given. Well, boss, there is something to be said for the lyric and imperial attitude. Believe everything is for you until you discover you are for it. Sing your faith in what you get to eat right up to the moment that you are eaten, for you are going to be eaten. Will the orchestra please strike up that old tootin' common jazz? Well, I dance a few steps. I learn from a gypsum scarab. And someday I will relate to you the most merry light-headed wheeze that the skull of Yorick put across an answer to the melancholy of the day. And what the ghost of Hamlet's father said to the skull, not forgetting the worm that wriggled along one of the pigs the gravediggers left behind. For the worm winked at her ratio while the skull and the prince and the father talked, saying, there are more things between the veriform appendix and nirvana than are dreamt of in my philosophy or ratio. Father Riddle, father Al, must every parrot be appalled? Ah!