THE WOLF, A HERO
"MY Father, of glorious memory," said a young Wolf to a Fox, "was a true hero! He taught the entire neighbourhood to fear him. In the course of a long life, he met and conquered more than two hundred enemies, and sent their miserable souls to the Kingdom of Death. What wonder is there that at last he was vanquished by one of them?"
"Thus would a prejudiced friend write his epitaph," rejoined the Fox. "But an impartial historian would add that the two hundred enemies whom he conquered in the course of his long life were only Sheep and Asses, and that the one enemy by whom he was vanquished was the first Ox he had ever dared to attack."
(Lessing, Fables, Book I, No. 12. Translated by G. Moir Bussey.)
THE GOOSE
ONCE upon a time there was a Goose whose feathers rivalled the whiteness of the newly fallen snow. In her pride at this dazzling gift of Nature, she considered herself intended for a Swan, rather than for what she really was. Accordingly, separating herself from her companions, she swam around the pond in solitary majesty. She now stretched her neck, the tell-tale shortness of which she made every effort to disguise. Now, she tried to give it that graceful curve which is the unmistakable charm of a really beautiful Swan. But she tried in vain, for her neck was too stiff, and in spite of all her pains she remained a ridiculous Goose, and never inspired a single beholder with the least idea that she resembled a Swan.
