THE ANGLER AND THE LITTLE FISH.
An Angler caught a small Trout, and as he was taking it off the hook, and going to put it into his basket, it opened its little throat, and begged most piteously that he would throw it into the river again. The man demanded what reason it had to expect this indulgence? Why, says the Fish, because I am so young and so little, that it is not worth your while taking me now, and certainly I shall be better worth your notice, if you take me a twelvemonth afterwards, when I shall be grown a great deal larger. That may be, replied the Angler, but I am sure of you now; and I am not one of those who quit a certainty in expectation of an uncertainty.