The Eagle and the Fox
An eagle that had young ones, looking out for something to feed them with, happened to spy a fox's cub, that lay basking itself abroad in the sun; she made a stoop and trussed it immediately; but before she carried it quite off, the old fox, coming home, implored her with tears in her eyes, to spare her cub, and the distress of a poor fond mother, who should think no affliction so great as that of losing her child.
The eagle, whose nest was up in a very high tree, thought herself secure enough from all projects of revenge, and so bore away the cub to her young ones, without showing any regard to the supplications of the fox. But that subtle creature, highly incensed at this outrageous barbarity, ran to an altar where some country people had been sacrificing a kid in the open fields, and catching up a firebrand in her mouth, made towards the tree where the eagle's nest was, with a resolution of revenge.
She had scarce ascended the first branches, when the eagle, terrified at the approaching ruin of herself and family, begged of the fox to desist, and with much submission, returned her the cub again safe and sound.
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,” said they.
“And so big?” says she, straining herself yet more.
“Indeed, mamma,” said they, “if you were to burst yourself, you would never be so big.” She strove yet again, and burst herself indeed.
A certain jackdaw was so proud and ambitious, that, not contented to live within his own sphere, he picked up the feathers which fell from the peacocks, stuck them in among his own, and very confidently introduced himself into an assembly of those beautiful birds. They soon found him out, stripped him of his borrowed plumes, and falling upon him with their sharp bills, punished him as his presumption deserved.
Upon this, full of grief and affliction, he returned to his old companions, and would have flocked with them again; but they, knowing his late life and conversation, industriously avoided him, and refused to admit him into their company; and one of them at the same time gave him this serious reproof: If, friend, you could have been contented with your station, and had not disdained the rank in which nature had placed you, you had not been used so scurvily by those upon whom you intruded yourself, nor suffered the notorious slight which now we think ourselves obliged to put upon you.
A dog, crossing a little rivulet, with a piece of flesh in his mouth, saw his own shadow represented in the clear mirror of the limpid stream; and believing it to be another dog, who was carrying another piece of flesh, he could not forbear catching at it; but was so far from getting any thing by his greedy design, that he dropt the piece he had in his mouth, which immediately sunk' to the bottom, and was irrecoverably lost.
A crow having taken a piece of cheese out of a cottage window, flew up into a high tree with it, in order to eat it. Which a fox observing, came and sat underneath, and began to compliment the crow upon the subject of her beauty. “I protest,” says he, “I never observed it before, but your feathers are of a more delicate white than anything I ever saw in my life! Ah! What a fine shape and graceful turn of body is there! And I make no question but you have a tolerable voice! If it is but as fine as your complexion, I do not know a bird that can pretend to stand in competition with you.”
The crow, tickled with this very civil language, nestled and wriggled about, and hardly knew where she was; but thinking the fox a little dubious as to the particular of her voice, and having a mind to set him right in that matter, began to sing, and, in the same instant, let the cheese drop out of her mouth.
This being what the fox wanted, he chopped it up in a moment, and trotted away, laughing to himself at the easy credulity of the crow.
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