APPLICATION.
As summer is the season in which the industrious laborious husbandman lays up his supplies for the winter, so youth and manhood are the times of life which we should employ in laying in such a stock as may suffice for helpless old age; yet there are many whom we call rational creatures, who 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 it in some miraculous way. From this Fable we learn this admirable lesson, never to lose the present opportunity of fairly and honestly providing against the future evils and accidents of life; and while health and the vigour of our faculties remain firm and entire, to lay them out to the best advantage; so that when age and infirmities despoil us of our strength and abilities, we may not have to bewail that we have neglected to provide for the wants of our latter days: for it should always be remembered, that “a youth of revels breeds an age of care,” and that temperance in youth lays the foundation of health and comfort for old age.
THE HORSE AND THE LION.
An old Lion, finding that many of the beasts had become too nimble for him, and that he could not come at his prey so readily as before, craftily gave out that he had long studied physic and surgery in foreign countries, and that he could cure every kind of disorder to which the beasts were liable. These professions having been spread abroad, he hoped to get many of the animals to come within his clutches. The Horse seeing through the whole of the scheme, was resolved to be even with him; and so humouring the thing as if he suspected nothing, he feigned himself to be in great pain from a wound in his foot, and limping up to the Lion, he begged he would examine the part and administer relief. The Lion, though intent only upon making a good meal of horse-flesh, begged the Horse to hold up his foot that he might see it: this was no sooner done, than the Horse gave him so violent a blow on the nose, as quite stunned him, and scampered off, neighing at the success of a trick, which had defeated the purpose of one who intended to have tricked him out of his life.
APPLICATION.
We ought never to put trust in the fair words and pretensions of those who have both an interest and inclination to ruin us; and where we find foul play thus intended against us, it is not in the nature of things to expect that we should not, if we can, turn the tables upon the plotters. Treachery has something so wicked and worthy of punishment in its nature, that it deserves to meet with a return of its own kind. An open revenge is too liberal for it, and nothing matches it but itself. Though a man of sense and honour will always view tricking and fraud of all kinds as mean and beneath him, and will despise setting such an example, yet it cannot be inconsistent with virtue to counteract the schemes of those who are taking all manner of undue advantages, and hatching wicked plots to undermine us.
