Mud-turtle

The mud-turtle said to the horse: “Just as I get sound asleep you are sure to come past and wake me up. We always used to have a good quiet time down here in the swamp till you got in the habit of thumping along this way. I am conservative and like to keep in my shell. I have been pastor of thirteen other mud-turtles, and we always had peace till you came, and next week at our semi-annual meeting of mud-turtles we shall either have you voted a nuisance or will talk it over in private, eight or ten of us, which will probably be the more prudent way.” Then the mud-turtle’s shell went shut with a snap, at which the horse kicked up his heels as he turned to go up to the barn to be harnessed to a load of corn that was ready for the market.

The hog is certainly a hog the world over, and, as also natural history teaches, it is certainly a land animal. Here at any rate it is looked at and treated as such, while the treatment it generally receives in the United States would incline one more to believe that it is amphibious and to belong at least to the species of mud-turtles; […]

“[…] I don’t believe it will ever be done!” “I don’t either,” said Marian; “those men work as slow as mud-turtles.” The conversation was taking place at the Elliotts’ dinner-table, and Uncle Charley looked up from his carving to say: “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the slower the mud-turtles are, the longer we shall have our guests with us.[…]”