crouch here so disconsolate?" "Why meddle, my dear fellow?" said Cheek. "There is a saying:
Death pursues the meddling flunkey:
Note the wedge-extracting monkey."
"How was that?" asked Victor. And Cheek told the story of
THE WEDGE-PULLING MONKEY
There was a city in a certain region. In a grove near by, a merchant was having a temple built. Each day at the noon hour the foreman and workers would go to the city for lunch.
Now one day a troop of monkeys came upon the half-built temple. There lay a tremendous anjana-log, which a mechanic had begun to split, a wedge of acacia-wood being thrust in at the top.
There the monkeys began their playful frolics upon tree-top, lofty roof, and woodpile. Then one of them, whose doom was near, thoughtlessly bestrode the log, thinking: "Who stuck a wedge in this queer place?" So he seized it with both hands and started to work it loose. Now what happened when the wedge gave at the spot where his private parts entered the cleft, that, sir, you know without being told.
"And that is why I say that meddling should be avoided by the intelligent. And you know," he continued, "that we two pick up a fair living just from his leavings."
