"Are you so old, Serpent, that you no longer care to eat?"
"Leave me, kind sir," replied the subtle reptile; "The troubles of a poor wretch like me cannot interest your noble mind."
"Let me at least hear them," said the Frog somewhat flattered.
"You must know then, kind sir," began the Serpent, "that twenty years ago, in Brahmapootra, I bit the son of Kaundinya, a holy Brahman, from which cruel bite he died. Seeing his boy dead, Kaundinya, in his sorrow and despair cursed me with the curse that I should be a carrier of Frogs. So here I am, waiting to do as the Brahman's curse compels me."
The Frog, after hearing all this, went and told it to Web-Foot, the Frog King, who quickly came to take a ride on the Serpent. He was carried so carefully, and was so delighted with his ride, that after that he used the Serpent all the time. But one day, seeing that the Serpent moved very slowly, he asked what was the matter.
"Please, your Majesty," explained the Serpent, "your slave has nothing to eat."
"Eat a few of my Frogs," said the King, "I give you leave."
"I thank your Majesty," answered the Serpent, and at once he began to eat the Frogs. Before long he had emptied the pond of all the King's Frogs, and finished by eating the King himself.
(Hitopadeça. Book IV. Fable 11. Adapted from the translation by Sir Edwin Arnold.)
THE SPARROW, THE WOODPECKER, THE FLY, THE FROG AND THE ELEPHANT
IN a certain forest there dwelt a pair of Sparrows whose nest was in a Tamala tree. One day an Elephant, made crazy by the heat of summer, came rushing through the forest, and seizing the branch on
