The Fables of Æsop, and Others With Designs on Wood
Part 2
The Fox and the Boar 175
The Frogs and the Fighting Bulls 179
The Two Frogs 199
The Fox and the Briar 201
The Fox and the Stork 215
The Fox and the HedgeHog 227
The Fox and the Goat 235
The Fowler and the Ring-dove 249
The Fowler and the Blackbird 263
The Fatal Marriage 277
The Fox and the Lion 285
The Flying Fish and the Dolphin 289
The Fox in the Well 311
The Fox and the Sick Lion 323
The Fox and the Countryman 331
The Fox and the Wolf 335
The Frogs and the Mice 353
The Fowler and the Lark 355
The Fowler and the Partridge 363
G
The Goat, the Kid, and the Wolf 29
The Goat and the Lion 101
The Gardener and his Dog 313
The Wild and the Tame Geese 351
H
The Husbandman and his Sons 15
Hercules and the Carter 37
The Drunken Husband 121
The Hen and the Swallow 127
The Hart and the Vine 157
The Old Hound 181
The Hen and the Fox 185
The Hare and the Tortoise 221
The Hares and the Frogs 251
The Harper 267
The Horse and the Stag 303
The Horse and the Lion 309
The Horse and the Ass 327
The Hawk and the Farmer 329
The Horse and the over-loaded Ass 343
The Husbandman and the Stork 345
I
Industry and Sloth 9
J
Jupiter and the Ass 79
Jupiter and the Camel 139
Jupiter and the Herdsman 209
Juno and the Peacock 237
Jupiter and Pallas 241
The Vain Jack-daw 255
K
The Bald Knight 87
The Kite and the Pigeons 281
The Sick Kite 283
The Kid and the Wolf 293
L
The Leopard and the Fox 21
The Lark and her Young Ones 41
The Lion and the Four Bulls 89
The Lion, the Tiger, and the Wolf 93
The Lioness and the Fox 123
The Lamb brought up by a Goat 125
The Old Lion 211
The Lion in Love 225
The Lion and other Beasts 239
The Lion and the Mouse 257
The Lion and the Frog 291
The Lion, the Wolf, and the Dog 367
M
The Master and his Scholar 7
The Young Man and the Swallow 11
The Mole and her Dam 27
The Young Men and the Cook 43
The Mule 45
Mercury and the Woodman 49
The Man and his Goose 55
The Old Man and his Sons 91
The Miser and his Treasure 97
A Man bitten by a Dog 113
The Envious Man and the Covetous 129
The Mice in Council 193
The Old Man and Death 197
The Man and the Weasel 203
The Magpie and the Sheep 213
The Man and his Two Wives 231
Mercury and the Carver 233
The Mountains in Labour 253
The Mouse and the Weasel 271
The Young Man and the Lion 279
The Country and the City Mouse 295
The Miller, his Son, and their Ass 305
The Young Man and his Cat 361
The Blind Man and the Lame 365
N
The Nurse and the Wolf 265
O
The Oak and the Reed 151
P
The Peacock and the Crane 23
The Two Pots 25
The Partridge and the Cocks 65
The Porcupine and the Snakes 131
The Polecat and the Cock 261
The Ploughman and Fortune 317
R
The Raven and the Serpent 337
S
The Stag looking into the Water 19
The Sheep Biter 33
The Swallow and other Birds 71
The Sow and the Wolf 133
The Stag and the Fawn 141
The Sow and the Bitch 163
The Satyr and the Traveller 165
The Sparrow and the Hare 229
The Stag in the Ox-Stall 247
The Sun and the Wind 325
The Serpent and the Man 341
The Shepherd turned Merchant 357
T
The Thief and the Dog 53
The Boasting Traveller 59
The Thieves and the Cock 73
The two Travellers 103
The Tortoise and the Eagle 259
The Trees and the Woodman 299
The Thief and the Boy 321
The Travellers and the Bear 347
The Trumpeter taken Prisoner 373
V
The Viper and the File 243
W
The Old Woman and her Maids 35
The Wolves and the Sick Ass 75
The Wolf, the Fox, and the Ape 85
The Old Woman and the Empty Cask 137
The Wolf and the Crane 155
The Wolf and the Lamb 191
The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing 245
THE
FABLES OF ÆSOP,
AND OTHERS.
THE TWO CRABS.
Two Crabs, the mother and daughter, having been left by the receding tide, were creeping again towards the water, when the former observing the awkward gait of her daughter, got into a great passion, and desired her to move straight forward, in a more becoming and sprightly manner, and not crawl sideling along in a way so contrary to all the rest of the world. Indeed mother, says the young Crab, I walk as properly as I can, and to the best of my knowledge; but if you would have me to go otherwise, I beg you would be so good as to practise it first, and shew me by your own example how you would have me to conduct myself.
APPLICATION.
Ill examples corrupt even the best natural disposition, and it is in vain to instruct our children, their talents being only imitation, to walk by one rule, if we ourselves go by another. The good precepts which we may lay down to them, will be bestowed in vain, if they see by our own conduct, that we pursue a contrary course to that which we recommend to them. Parents therefore, who are desirous of working an effectual reformation in their children, should begin by making a visible amendment in themselves; and this is a duty they owe to society, as well as to their offspring, it being of the utmost importance to both, that probity and honour be early instilled into their youthful minds, as these grow with their growth, and while at the same time they command respect, they lay the foundation of their individual happiness through life.
THE APE AND HER YOUNG ONES.
An Ape having two young ones, was dotingly fond of one, but disregarded and slighted the other. One day she chanced to be surprized by the hunters, and had much ado to get off. However, she did not forget her favourite young one, which she took up in her arms, that it might be the more secure: the other, which she neglected, by natural instinct, leapt upon her back, and so away they scampered together; but it unluckily fell out, in the over-anxiety of her precipitate flight, confused and blinded with haste, that she struck her favourite’s head against a branch, which threw it on the ground, where the darling bantling was seized by the dogs and killed. The hated one, clinging close to her rough back, escaped all the danger of the pursuit.
APPLICATION.
By dear mamma’s o’er-weening fondness spoil’d, Caress’d and pamper’d, dies the fav’rite child: The boy she slights, rough, vig’rous, and well-grown, Unaided, bears the brunt, and shifts alone.
The indulgence which parents shew to their children arises from the most amiable of human weaknesses; but it is not the less injurious in its effects, and therefore it is of great importance to guard against it, and not to suffer a blind fondness to transport us beyond the bounds of a discreet affection, for this often proves the ruin of the child. This fable is also intended to expose the folly of a system of favouritism in families, for experience shews that those children who are the least pampered and indulged usually make the best and cleverest men.
THE BOY AND HIS MOTHER.
A little Boy having stolen a book from one of his school-fellows, took it to his Mother, who, instead of correcting him, praised his sharpness, and rewarded him. In process of time, as he grew bigger, he increased also in villainy, till at length he was taken up for committing a great robbery, and was brought to justice and condemned for it. As the officers were conducting him to the gallows, he was attended by a vast crowd, and among the rest his Mother came sobbing along, and deploring her son’s unhappy fate; which the criminal observing, he begged leave to speak to her: this being granted, he put his mouth to her ear, as if he was going to whisper something, and bit it off! The officer, shocked at this behaviour, asked him if the crimes he had committed were not sufficient to glut his wickedness, without being also guilty of such an unnatural violence towards his mother? Let no one wonder, said he, that I have done this to her, for she deserves even worse at my hands. For if she had chastised instead of praising and encouraging me, when I stole my school-fellow’s book, I should not now have been brought to this ignominious and untimely end.
APPLICATION.
The approaches to vice are by slow degrees, and the good or evil bias given to youth is seldom eradicated. The first deviations from sound morality should therefore be most strictly watched, and wickedness checked or punished in time; for when vice grows into a habit, it becomes incurable, and both good governments and private families are deeply concerned in its attendant consequences. One need not scruple to affirm that most of the depravity which is so frequent in the world, and so pernicious to society, is owing to the bad education of youth; and to the connivance or ill example of their parents. It is therefore of the utmost consequence that parents, guardians, and tutors, should be of characters befitting them for the various and important offices they have to perform. The latter description of persons may and ought to be carefully selected; but it is to be lamented that the base and mean-spirited hosts of bad parents are out of the reach of controul, and nothing can prevent the evils arising from their tutorage. Perhaps it would be harsh to make laws to check the marriages of such; but there is no need to encourage the breed of them, for they are already over abundantly numerous.
THE MASTER AND HIS SCHOLAR.
As a School-master was walking upon the bank of a river, he heard a cry as of one in distress: advancing a few paces farther, he saw one of his Scholars in the water, hanging by the branch of a willow. The Boy had, it seems, been learning to swim with corks, and now thinking himself sufficiently experienced, had thrown these implements aside, and ventured into the water without them; but the force of the stream having hurried him out of his depth, he had certainly been drowned, had not the branch of the tree providentially hung in his way. The Master took up the corks, which lay upon the ground, and throwing them to his Scholar, made use of this opportunity to read a lecture to him upon the inconsiderate rashness of youth. Let this be an example to you, says he, in the conduct of your future life, never to throw away your corks till time has given you strength and experience enough to swim without them.
APPLICATION.
Rashness is the peculiar vice of youth, and may be stiled the characteristic foible of that season of life. The foundation of this rashness is laid in a fond conceit of their own abilities, which tempts them to undertake affairs too great for their capacities, and to venture out of their depths, or to suffer themselves to be hurried into the most precipitate and dangerous measures, before they find out their own weakness and inability. It therefore behoves inexperienced young men to keep a cautious guard over their passions, to check the irregularities of their disposition, and to listen to the wholesome advice and good council of those whose judgments are matured by age and experience: for few are above the need of advice, nor are we ever too old to learn any thing for which we may be the better. But young men, above all, should not disdain to open their eyes to good example, and their ears to admonition: neither should they be ashamed to borrow rules for their behaviour in the world, until they are enabled from their own knowledge of men and things, to stem its crooked tides and currents with ease and honour to themselves.
Consult your elders, use their sense alone, Till age and practice have confirm’d your own.
INDUSTRY AND SLOTH.
An indolent Young Man being asked why he lay in bed so long? jocosely answered, “Every morning of my life I am hearing causes. I have two fine girls, their names are Industry and Sloth, close at my bed-side as soon as I awake, pressing their different suits. One intreats me to get up, the other persuades me to lie still; and then they alternately give me various reasons why I should rise, and why I should not. This detains me so long, (it being the duty of an impartial judge to hear all that can be said on either side) that before the pleadings are over, it is time to go to dinner.”
APPLICATION.
“He who defers his work from day to day, Does on a river’s brink expecting stay, ’Till the whole stream which stopt him shall be gone, Which, as it runs, for ever will run on.”
Indolence is like a stream which flows slowly on, but yet it undermines every virtue; it rusts the mind, and gives a tincture to every action of one’s life, the term of which does not allow time for long protracted deliberations; and yet how many waste more of their time in idly considering which of two affairs to begin first, than would have ended them both? To-morrow is still the fatal time when all is to be done; to-morrow comes, it goes, and still indolence pleases itself with the shadow, while it loses the substance: and thus men pass through life like a bird through the air, and leave no track behind them, unmindful that the present time alone is ours, and should be managed with judicious care, since we cannot secure a moment to come, nor recal one that is past. It is no matter how many good qualities the mind may be possessed of; they all lie dormant if we want the necessary vigour and resolution to draw them forth; for this slumber of the mind leaves no difference between the greatest genius and the meanest understanding. Neither the mind nor the body can be active and vigorous without proper exertion, and trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from useless ease; therefore, “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.”
THE YOUNG MAN AND THE SWALLOW.
A prodigal thoughtless young Man, who had wasted his whole patrimony in taverns and gaming-houses, among his lewd idle companions, was taking a melancholy walk near a brook. It was in the spring, while the hills were yet capped with snow, but it happened to be one of those clear sunny days which some times occur at that time of the year; and to make appearances the more flattering, a Swallow which had been invited forth by the warmth, flew skimming along upon the surface of the water. The Youth observing this, concluded that the summer was now come, and that he should have little or no occasion for clothes, so went and pawned them, and ventured the money for one stake more, among his sharping associates. When this too was gone, like all the rest of his property, he took another solitary walk in the same place as before, but the weather being severe and frosty, every thing had put on a very different aspect; the brook was frozen over, and the poor Swallow lay dead upon the bank. At this, the Youth, smarting under the sense of his own misery, mistakingly reproached the Swallow as the cause of all his misfortunes: he cried out, oh, unhappy bird, thou hast undone both thyself and me, who was so credulous as to trust to thy appearance.
APPLICATION.
They who frequent taverns and gaming-houses, and keep bad company, should not wonder if they are reduced in a very short time to penury and want. The wretched young fellows who once addict themselves to such a scandalous course of life, scarcely think of or attend to any thing besides: they seem to have nothing else in their heads but how they may squander what they have got, and where they may get more when that is gone. They do not make the same use of their reason as other people, but like the jaundiced eye, view every thing in a false light, and having turned a deaf ear to all advice, and pursued their unaltered course until all their property is irrecoverably lost, when at length misery forces upon them a sense of their situation, they still lay the blame upon any cause but the right one--their own extravagance and folly; like the Prodigal in the fable, who would not have considered a solitary occurrence as a general indication of the season, had not his own wicked desires blinded his understanding.
THE COLLIER AND THE FULLER.
The Collier and the Fuller being old acquaintances, happened upon a time to meet together, and the latter being but ill provided with a habitation, was invited by the former to come and live in the same house with him. I thank you, my dear friend, replied the Fuller, for your kind offer; but it cannot be, for if I were to dwell with you, whatever I should take pains to scour and make clean in the morning, the dust of you and your coals would blacken and defile before night.
APPLICATION.
It is of no small importance in life to be cautious what company we keep, and with whom we enter into friendship; for though we are ever so well disposed ourselves, and free from vice, yet if those with whom we frequently converse, are engaged in a lewd, wicked course, it will be almost impossible for us to escape being drawn in with them. If we are truly wise, and would shun those rocks of pleasure upon which so many have split, we should forbid ourselves all manner of commerce and correspondence with those who are steering a course, which reason tells us is not only not for our advantage, but would end in our destruction. All the virtue we can boast of, will not be sufficient to insure our safety, if we embark in bad company; for though our philosophy were such as would preserve us from being tainted and infected with their manners, yet their characters would twist and entwine themselves along with ours, in so intricate a fold, that the world would not take the trouble to unravel and separate them. Reputation is of a blending nature, like water; that which is derived from the clearest spring, if it chance to mix with a foul current, runs on undistinguished, in one muddy stream, and must ever partake of the colour and condition of its associate.
THE HUSBANDMAN AND HIS SONS.
A Husbandman, at the point of death, being desirous that his Sons should pursue the same innocent course of agriculture in which he himself had been engaged all his life, made use of this expedient. He called them to his bed-side, and said: All the patrimony I have to bequeath to you, my sons, is my farm and my vine-yard, of which I make you joint heirs; but I charge you not to let them go out of your own occupation, for if I have any treasure besides, it lies buried somewhere in the ground within a foot of the surface. This made the Sons conclude that he talked of money which he had hidden: so after their father’s death, with unwearied diligence, they carefully dug up every inch, and though they found not the money they expected, the ground, by being well stirred and loosened, produced so plentiful a crop of all that was sown in it, as proved a real, and that no inconsiderable treasure.
APPLICATION.
The good name and the good counsel of a father, are the best legacies he can leave to his children; and they ought to revere the one, and keep in mind the other. The wealth which a man acquires by his honest industry affords him greater pleasure in the enjoyment, than when acquired in any other way; and men who by personal labour have obtained a competency, know its value better than those can who have had it showered upon them without any efforts of their own. Idleness engenders disease, while exercise is the great prop of health, and health is the greatest blessing of life, which consideration alone ought to stimulate men to pursue some useful employment; and among the almost endless number of those, to which good laws and well-organized society give birth and encouragement, there are none equal to the culture of the earth, none which yield a more grateful return. The pleasures derived both from agriculture and horticulture, are so various, so delightful, and so natural to man, that they are not easily to be described, and are never to be excelled: for in whatever way they are pursued, the mind may be constantly entertained with the wonderful œconomy of the vegetable world; and the nerves are invigorated and kept in proper tone by the freshness of the earth, and the fragrancy of the air, which blush the countenance with health, and give a relish to every meal.
THE PROUD FROG AND THE OX.
An Ox, grazing in a meadow, chanced to set his foot among a parcel of young Frogs, and trod one of them to death. The rest informed their mother, when she came home, what had happened; telling her, that the beast which did it, was the hugest creature that they ever saw in their lives. What, was it so big? says the old Frog, swelling and blowing up her speckled belly to a great degree. Oh! bigger by a vast deal, say they: and so big? says she, straining herself yet more. Indeed, say they, if you were to burst yourself, you would never be so big. She strove yet again, and burst herself indeed.
APPLICATION.