APPLICATION.
Perhaps we cannot apply this better than by supposing the fable to be a parable! which may be thus explained. The Deer, viewing itself in the water, is a beautiful young lady at her looking-glass. She cannot help being sensible of the charms which lie blooming in every feature of her face. She moistens her lips, languishes with her eyes, adjusts every lock of her hair with the nicest exactness, gives an agreeable attitude to her whole body; and then, with a soft sigh, says to herself,—'Ah! how happy might I be, in a daily crowd of admirers, if it were not for the censoriousness of the age! when I view that face, where Nature, to give her her due, has been liberal enough of charms, how easy should I be, if it were not for that slender particular, my honour. The odious idea of that comes across all my happy moments, and brings a mortification with it that damps my most flattering tender hopes. Oh! that there were no such thing in the world!'—In the midst of these soliloquies she is interrupted by the voice of her lover, who enters her chamber singing a rigadoon air; and, introducing his discourse in a familiar easy manner, takes occasion to launch out in praise of her beauty; sees she is pleased with it, snatches her hand, kisses it in a transport; and, in short, pursues his point so close, that she is not able to disengage herself from him. But, when the consequence of all this approaches, in an agony of grief and shame, she fetches a deep sigh and says—'Ah! how mistaken have I been! the virtue I slighted might have saved me; but the beauty I prized so much has been my undoing.'
FABLE CVII.
THE STAG AND THE OX-STALL.
A Stag, roused out of his thick cover in the midst of the forest, and driven hard by the hounds, made towards a farm-house, and seeing the door of an Ox-Stall open, entered therein, and hid himself under a heap of straw. One of the Oxen, turning his head about, asked him what he meant by venturing himself in such a place as that was, where he was sure to meet with his doom?—'Ah!' says the Stag, 'if you will but be so good as to favour me with your concealment, I hope I shall do well enough; I intend to make off again the first opportunity.'—Well, he staid there till towards night; in came the ox-man with a bundle of fodder, and never saw him. In short, all the servants of the farm came and went, and not a soul of them smelt any thing of the matter. Nay, the bailiff himself came according to form, and looked in, but walked away no wiser than the rest. Upon this the Stag, ready to jump out of his skin for joy, began to return thanks to the good-natured Oxen, protesting that they were the most obliging people he had ever met with in his life. After he had done his compliments, one of them answered him gravely—'Indeed, we desire nothing more than to have it in our power to contribute to your escape; but there is a certain person, you little think of, who has a hundred eyes; if he should happen to come, I would not give this straw for your life.'—In the interim, home comes the master himself, from a neighbour's, where he had been invited to dinner; and, because he had observed the cattle to look but scurvily of late, he went up to the rack, and asked, why they did not give them more fodder? then, casting his eyes downward,—'Hey-day!' says he, 'why so sparing of your litter? pray scatter a little more here. And these cobwebs—but I have spoke so often, that unless I do it myself—' Thus, as he went on, prying into every thing, he chanced to look where the Stag's horns lay sticking out of the straw; upon which he raised a hue-and-cry, called all his people about him, killed the poor Stag, and made a prize of him.
APPLICATION.
The moral of this fable is, that nobody looks after a man's affairs so well as he himself. Servants, being but hirelings, seldom have the true interest of their master at heart, but let things run on in a negligent constant disorder; and this, generally, not so much for want of capacity as honesty. Their heads are taken up with the cultivation of their own private interest; for the service and promotion of which that of their master is postponed, and often entirely neglected.