How the Monkey Escaped Being Eaten

Then he said, "O, children, O, children, I cannot dance any more. It is so hot here in this room."

The children begged him to dance some more.

"If you will open the door a little bit so that I can have more air to breathe I'll show you a new dance," said the monkey.

The children opened the door. The monkey danced over to the door and out of the door away to the tree top. That was the last they ever saw of him. He moved to another part of the country after that experience.

When the man came home with fuel for the fire the children did not dare to tell him that the monkey had escaped. They let him think that the sticks and the cocoanut shell in the pot was the monkey. He built a big roaring fire under the pot and soon it was boiling merrily. After the pot had boiled a while he called the children to come to supper with him. The children let him taste first. He fished a hard stick out of the pot and bit into it. "This is not the monkey's leg. It is just a dry stick," he said, as he made a wry face. Then he fished the empty cocoanut shell out of the pot. "That is not the monkey's head," he said as he tasted it, "That is just an empty cocoanut shell." He couldn't find a single trace of the monkey in that monkey stew. He never wished to make a monkey stew again.