the way to do it: Fly up as high as you can, and let the tiresome thing fall upon a
rock. It will be smashed then sure enough, and you can eat it at your leisure."
The simple-minded and unsuspecting Crow did as he was told, flew up and let
the Mussel fall.
Before he could descend to eat it, however, the other bird had pounced upon it
and carried it away.
The Ass and His Purchaser
A Man wished to purchase an Ass, and agreed with his owner that he should try
him before he bought him. He took the Ass home, and put him in the straw-yard
with his other asses, upon which the beast left all the others and joined himself at
once to the most idle and the greatest eater of them all.
The Man put a halter on him, and led him back to his owner: and when he was
asked how, in so short a time, he could have made a trial of him, "I do not need,"
he answered, "a trial; I know that he will be just such another as the one whom
of all the rest he chose for his companion."
A Country Fellow and the River
A stupid Boy, who was sent to market by the good old woman, his Mother, to
sell butter and cheese, made a stop by the way at a swift river, and laid himself
down on the bank there, until it should run out.
About midnight, home he went to his Mother, with all his market trade back
again.
"Why, how now, my Son?" said she. "What ill fortune have you had, that you
have sold nothing all day?"
"Why, Mother, yonder is a river that has been running all this day, and I stayed
till just now, waiting for it to run out; and there it is, running still."
"My Son," said the good woman, "thy head and mine will be laid in the grave