accustom yourself to walking straight forward without twisting from side to
side."
"Pray, mother," said the young one, "do but set the example yourself, and I will
follow you!"
The Jackdaw with Borrowed Plumes
A Jackdaw, having dressed himself in feathers which had fallen from some
Peacocks, strutted about in the company of those birds and tried to pass himself
off as one of them.
They soon found him out, however, and pulled their plumes from him so
roughly, and in other ways so battered him, that he would have been glad to
rejoin his humble fellows, but they, in their turn, would have nothing to do with
him, and driving him from their society, told him to remember that it is not only
fine feathers that make fine birds.
The Farmer and His Dog
A Farmer who had just stepped into the field to close a gap in one of his fences
found on his return the cradle, where he had left his only child asleep, turned
upside down, the clothes all torn and bloody, and his Dog lying near it
besmeared also with blood. Convinced at once that the creature had destroyed
his child, he instantly dashed out its brains with the hatchet in his hand; when,
turning up the cradle, he found the child unhurt and an enormous serpent lying
dead on the floor, killed by the faithful Dog, whose courage and fidelity in
preserving the life of his son deserved another kind of reward.
These affecting circumstances afforded him a striking lesson upon how
dangerous it is hastily to give way to the blind impulse of a sudden passion.
The Fox and the Countryman
A Fox, having been hunted hard and chased a long way, saw a Countryman at