Part 3 (1/2)

If they could only have had the privilege of reading this fable, it would have taught them more than either.

XVII.

While a man was trying with all his might to cross a fence, a bull ran to his a.s.sistance, and taking him upon his horns, tossed him over.

Seeing the man walking away without making any remark, the bull said:

”You are quite welcome, I am sure. I did no more than my duty.”

”I take a different view of it, very naturally,” replied the man, ”and you may keep your polite acknowledgments of my grat.i.tude until you receive it. I did not require your services.”

”You don't mean to say,” answered the bull, ”that you did not wish to cross that fence!”

”I mean to say,” was the rejoinder, ”that I wished to cross it by my method, solely to avoid crossing it by yours.”

_Fabula docet_ that while the end is everything, the means is something.

XVIII.

An hippopotamus meeting an open alligator, said to him:

”My forked friend, you may as well collapse. You are not sufficiently comprehensive to embrace me. I am myself no tyro at smiling, when in the humour.”

”I really had no expectation of taking you in,” replied the other. ”I have a habit of extending my hospitality impartially to all, and about seven feet wide.”

”You remind me,” said the hippopotamus, ”of a certain zebra who was not vicious at all; he merely kicked the breath out of everything that pa.s.sed behind him, but did not induce things to pa.s.s behind him.”

”It is quite immaterial what I remind you of,” was the reply.

The lesson conveyed by this fable is a very beautiful one.

XIX.

A man was plucking a living goose, when his victim addressed him thus:

”Suppose _you_ were a goose; do you think you would relish this sort of thing?”

”Well, suppose I were,” answered the man; ”do you think _you_ would like to pluck me?”