APPLICATION.
This fable points out to us the different characters of those that recommend themselves in a vain-glorious way by false and borrowed lights; and of those whose real merit procures them a good esteem wherever they go. Poverty and folly having, at the same time, possession of any one man, cannot fail of making him an object of pity, if not of contempt; but, when an empty conceited pride happens to be joined with them, they render the creature in whom they meet at the same time despicable and ridiculous. One who often attends at court, not because he has a place, but because he has not, should not value himself upon his condition. They who go to church out of vanity and curiosity, and not for pure devotion, should not value themselves upon their religion, for it is not worth a straw. They who eat at a threepenny ordinary, and sometimes not so well, should not boast either of their dinner or company. In short, nobody is a better gentleman, than he whose own honest industry supplies him with a plenty of all necessaries; who is so well acquainted with honour, as never to say or do a mean and unjust thing; and who despises an idle scoundrel, but knows how to esteem men of his own principles. Such a one is a person of the first quality, though he has never a title, and ought to take place of every man who is not so good as himself.
FABLE XLIX.
THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER.
In the winter season, a commonwealth of Ants was busily employed in the management and preservation of their corn; which they exposed to the air in heaps round about the avenues of their little country habitation. A Grasshopper, who had chanced to outlive the summer, and was ready to starve with cold and hunger, approached them with great humility, and begged that they would relieve his necessity, with one grain of wheat or rye. One of the Ants asked him, how he had disposed of his time in summer, that he had not taken pains, and laid in a stock, as they had done?—'Alas, gentlemen,' says he, 'I passed away the time merrily and pleasantly, in drinking, singing, and dancing, and never once thought of winter.'—'If that be the case,' replied the Ant, laughing, 'all I have to say is, that they who drink, sing, and dance in the summer, must starve in winter.'
APPLICATION.
As summer is the season of the year in which the industrious and laborious husbandman gathers and lays up such fruits as may supply his necessities in winter, so youth and manhood are the times of life which we should employ and bestow in laying in such a stock of all kind of necessaries as may suffice for the craving demands of helpless old age. Yet, notwithstanding the truth of this, there are many of those which we call rational creatures, who live in a method quite opposite to it, and make it their business to squander away, in a profuse prodigality, whatever they get in their younger days: as if the infirmity of age would require no supplies to support it; or, at least, would find them administered to in some miraculous way. From this fable we learn this admirable lesson, never to lose any present opportunity of providing against the future evils and accidents of life. While health and the flower and vigour of our age remain firm and entire, let us lay them out to the best advantage, that, when the latter days take hold of us, and spoil us of our strength and abilities, we may have a store moderately sufficient to subsist upon, which we laid up in the morning of our age.