HOW THE RAVEN HELPED MEN.
The raven and the eagle were cousins, and they were almost always friendly, but whenever they talked together about men, they quarreled.
"Men are lazy," declared the eagle. "There is no use in trying to help them. The more one does for them, the less they do for themselves."
"You fly so high," said the raven, "that you cannot see how hard men work. I think that we birds, who know so much more than they, ought to help them."
"They do not work," cried the eagle. "What have they to do, I should like to know? They walk about on the ground, and their food grows close by their nests. If they had to fly through the air as we do, and get their food wherever they could, they might talk about working hard."
"That is just why we ought to help them," replied the raven. "They cannot mount up into the air as we do. They cannot see anything very well unless it is near them, and if they had to run and catch their food, they would surely die of hunger. They are poor, weak creatures, and there is not a humming-bird that does not know many things that they never heard of."
"You are a poor, weak bird, if you think you can teach men. When they feel hunger, they will eat, and they do not know how to do anything else. Just look at them! They ought to be going to sleep, and they do not know enough to do even that."
"How can they know that it is night, when they have no sun and no moon to tell them when it is day and when it is night?"
"They would not go to sleep even if they had two moons," said the eagle; "and you are no true cousin of mine if you do not let them alone."