Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists/Fable CLXIV

by Roger L'Estrange

Fab. CLXIV.

Two Travellers and a Bag of Money.

AS Two Travellers were upon the Way together, One of 'em Stoops, and Takes up Something. Look ye here (says he) I have found a Bag of Money: No says T’other, When Two Friends are together, You must not say [I] have found it, but [WE] have found it. The Word was no sooner Out, but immediately comes a Hue and Cry after a Gang of Thieves that had taken a Purse upon the Road. Lord! Brother (says He that had the Bag) We shall be Utterly Undone.Oh Phy, says T'other, You must not say [WE] shall be undone, but [I] shall be undone; for if I'm to have no Part in the Finding, you must not think I'll go Halves in the Hanging.

The MORAL.

They that will Enter into Leagues and Partnerships, must take the Good and the Bad One with Another.

REFLEXION.

THE Doctrine of This Fable is according to Reason, and Nature. People that are not Allow'd to be Sharers with their Companions in Good Fortune, will hardly ever agree to be Sharers in Bad, An Open, and an Honest Candor of Mind carries a Body Safe and Dry through all Ways and Weathers; Whereas in shifting and shuffling, a Man puts himself off his Guard; and the same Rule that serves him at One time, will

not serve him at Another, Men are willing enough to have Partners in Loss, but not in Profit; and 'tis not the Traveller alone that cries [I] have found a Purse of Gold, and then Changes his Note upon the Hue and Cry, and says [WE] shall be Hang'd for't; but 'tis the Course of All People of Intrigue, to give Every thing two Faces, and to Deal with the World, as the Spark did with the Oracle. The Bird shall be dead or living, which himself Pleases.

To Emprove the Moral yet a little farther, we have a Thousand Disappointments in the Ordinary Course of Life to Answer This in the Fable. Many a Man finds this Purse of Gold in a Mistress, in a Bottle, in an Office, and in All other the vain Satisfactions of This World: And what’s the End on't at last, but when he has Compass'd his Longing, Gratify’d his Appetite, or, as he fancies, made his Fortune perhaps: He grows presently Sick of his Purchase; His Conscience is the Hue and Cry That pursues him, and when he reckons upon it that he has gotten a Booty, he has only caught a Tartar. The Bag of Money burnt the Poor Fellow’s Fingers in the very Taking of it up.