HOW THE RHINOCEROS GOT HIS SKIN

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    ONCE upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly ouch.  And one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick. It was inde99ｌｉb?ed a Superior estible (thats magic), a it on stove because he was allowed to cook oove, and he baked it and he baked it till it was all done brown and smelt most seal. But just as he was going to eat it there came down to the beach from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior one Rhinoceros with a horn on his wo piggy eyes, and few manners. In those days the Rhinoceross skin fitted him quite tight. There were no wrinkles in it anywhere.  He looked exactly like a Noahs Ark Rhinoceros, but of course much bigger. All the same, he had no mahen, and he has no manners now, and he never will have any manners. He said, How!

    and the Parsee left that cake and climbed to the top of a palm tree with nothing on but his <bdo></bdo>hat, from which the rays of the sun were always reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Rhinoceros upset the oil-stove with his nose, and the cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, ae it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the desolate and Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the islands of Mazanderan, Socotra, and Promontories of the Larger Equinox.  Then the Parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the stove on its legs aed the following Sloka, which, as you have not heard, I will now proceed to relate:--

    Them that takes cakes

    Which the Parsee-man bakes

    Makes dreadful mistakes.

    And there was a great deal more in that than you would think.

    Because, five weeks later, there was a heat wave in the Red Sea, and everybody took off all the clothes they had. The Parsee took off his hat; but the Rhinoceros took off his skin and carried it over his shoulder as he came down to the beach to bathe. In those days it buttoned underh with three buttons and looked like a roof. He said nothing whatever about the Parsees cake, because he had eaten it all; and he never had any manners, then, since, or henceforward. He waddled straight into the water and blew bubbles through his nose, leaving his skin on the beach.

    Presently the Parsee came by and found the skin, and he smiled one smile that ran all roun<bdi></bdi>d his face two times. Then he dahree times round the skin and rubbed his hands. Then he went to his camp and filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the Parsee e anything but cake, and never swept out his camp. He took that skin, and he shook that skin, and he scrubbed that skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full of old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could possibly hold. Then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and waited for the Rhinoceros to e out of the water and put it on.

    And the Rhinoceros did. He butto up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake crumbs ihen he wao scratch, but that made it worse; and then he lay down on the sands and rolled and rolled and rolled, and every time he rolled the cake crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse. Then he ran to the palm-tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself against it. He rubbed so mud so hard that he rubbed his skin into a great fold over his shoulders, and another fold underh, where the buttons used to be (but he rubbed the buttons off), and he rubbed some more folds over his legs. And it spoiled his temper, but it didnt make the least differeo the cake-crumbs. They were inside his skin and they tickled. So he went home, very angry indeed and horribly scratchy; and from that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on at of the cake-crumbs inside.

    But the Parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat, from which the rays of the sun were reflect<mark></mark>ed in more-than-oriental splendour, packed up his cooking-stove, a away in the dire of Orotavo, Amygdala, the Upland  Meadows of Anantarivo, and the Marshes of Sonaput.

    THIS Uninhabited Island

    Is off Cape Gardafui,

    By the Beaches of Socotra

    And the Pink Arabian Sea:

    But its hot--too hot from Suez

    For the likes of you and me

    Ever to go

    In a P. and 0.

    And call on the Cake-Parsee!

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