A recent symposium is thus described
“Gentlemen,” said the Macon drummer,
opening up his grip and taking out a
piece of coal, here is a curiosity. This
piece of coal was given me by a friend
who owns a mine near Birmingham, in
the great State of Alabama. You will
observe that on one side of it is the per
fect impression of a frog. This piece
of coal was found exactly one thousand
three hundred and nineteen feet below
the surface of the earth. The fiog ap
parenely dead, was firmly imbedded in
it. When both coal and frog were brought
to the surface the latter suddenly swelled
up, wiggled its legs, ond then tore itself
away from the piece of coal and jumped
into a pool of water.”
“That reminds me,” said one of the
Atlanta drummers, “of a curious thing
that happened in Atlanta. The Kimball
House —the old one. I mean —was built
over aspring. Of course nothing cosld
get in or out of the spring after that
tremendous pile of brick was reared up
on it. The Kimball House, you’ll remem
ber, was burned in 1883. Two days after
the fire some firemen succeeded in mak
ing their way to the spring, and bless me,
if they didn’t find live big frogs swim
ming around as merrily as if they'd been
in ice water. Just think of it, they were
caught in the Kimball House when it was
built, and, of coarse they were there
when the tire occurred.”
“Quite curious,” said the other Atlanta
drummer, “but perhaps you didn’t know
that there were originally six big frogs in
the spring. The sixth was found four
days after the fire, squatting on top of
the big chimney, taking a view of the im
provements that had been made in At
lanta since the Kimball House was built.”
“Gentlemen,” said the Cincinnati drum
mer, “your stories are doubtless quite as
true as they are interesting. Hermit me
to relate one in which frogs figure to some
extent. Near Cincinnati there is a large
pond. It is always full of frogs and tke
biggest frog known to natural history.
