The Aristocratic Goose of Seattle

One day when summer had begun her business of blistering the ears of small boys and helping the ice men to grow rich and high-costed, an old goose suspended her frog-hunting operations in the pond and called her three dear goslings about her for a family chat. 'My dear, dear daughters,' she began, as she put up one foot to see if her toe-catchers were properly curled, 'I am grieved that we are compelled to reside in so mean a neighborhood as this. Since your father died and I got his life insurance, I have found no one here good enough for me to associate with. The young ganders around here are a mud-puddle lot. We must continue to reside here for a time, but that is no reason why any of you should remain single.' She instructed her daughters to pretend to be elegant, to quote poetry, and to feign grief to attract wealthy suitors. They eventually ventured to a fashionable frog-pond and successfully caught three 'foreign' foxes in their traps. However, the honeymoon was short-lived: one husband was arrested for theft, another was revealed to be a buzzard who stole the mother's diamonds, and the third got drunk and smothered in the mud. As the crestfallen quartet waddled home, a local drake remarked: 'While I would not utter one quack to add to your over-wrought feelings, let me in all kindness gently remark that the difference between marrying a home-gander or a foreign fox is seldom seen by a goose until it has been baked and eaten.'