THE FOX WITHOUT A TAIL.
A Fox being caught in a trap, escaped after much difficulty with the loss of his tail. He was, however, a good deal ashamed of appearing in public without this ornament, and at last, to avoid being singular and ridiculous in the eyes of his own species, he formed the project of calling together an assembly of Foxes, and of persuading them that the docking of their tails was a fashion that would be very agreeable and becoming. Accordingly he made a long harangue to them for that purpose, and endeavoured chiefly to shew the awkwardness and inconvenience of a Fox’s tail, adding that they were quite useless, and that they would be a very great deal better without them. He asserted, that what he had only conjectured and imagined before, he now found by experience to be true, for he never enjoyed himself so much, and found himself so easy as he had done since he cut off his tail. He then looked round with a brisk air, to see what proselytes he had gained; when a sly old Fox in company answered him, with a leer: I believe you may have found a convenience in parting with your tail, and perhaps when we are in the same circumstances, we may do so too.