Well, the Man didn’t know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up before him on the Donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passers-by began to jeer and point to them. The Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at. The men said: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor Donkey of yours—you and your hulking son?”
The Man and Boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the Donkey’s feet to it, and raised the pole and the Donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them till they came to Market Bridge, when the Donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the Boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the Donkey fell over the bridge, and his fore-feet being tied together he was drowned.
“That will teach you,” said an old man who had followed them:
“PLEASE ALL, AND YOU WILL PLEASE NONE.”
THE SHEPHERD’S BOY
There was once a young Shepherd Boy who tended his sheep at the foot of a mountain near a dark forest. It was rather lonely for him all day, so he thought upon a plan by which he could get a little company and some excitement. He rushed down toward the village calling out “Wolf, Wolf,” and the villagers came out to meet him, and some of them stopped with him for a considerable time.
This pleased the boy so much that a few days afterward he tried the same trick, and again the villagers came to his help.
But shortly after this a Wolf actually did come out from the forest, and began to worry the sheep, and the boy of course cried out “Wolf, Wolf,” still louder than before. But this time the villagers who had been fooled twice before, thought the boy was again deceiving them, and nobody stirred to come to bis help.
So the Wolf made a good meal off the boy’s flock, and when the boy complained, the wise man of the village said:
“A LIAR WILL NOT BE BELIEVED, EVEN WHEN HE SPEAKS THE TRUTH.”