One warm day a Deer went down to a brook to get a drink. The stream was smooth and clear, and he could see himself in the water. He looked at his horns and was very proud of them, for they were large and long and had many branches, but when he saw his feet he was ashamed to own them, they were so slim and small.
While he stood knee-deep in the water, and was thinking only of his fine horns, a Lion saw him and came leaping out from the tall grass to get him. The Deer would have been caught at once if he had not jumped quickly out of the brook. He ran as fast as he could, and his feet were so light and swift that he soon left the Lion far behind. But by and by he had to pass through some woods, and, as he was running, his horns were caught in some vines that grew among the trees. Before he could get loose the Lion was upon him.
"Ah me!" cried the Deer, "the things which pleased me most will now cause my death; while the things which I thought so mean and poor would have carried me safe out of danger."
The Fox and the Grapes
There was a time when a Fox would have ventured as far for a Bunch of Grapes as for a shoulder of mutton, and it was a Fox of those days and that palate that stood gaping under a vine and licking his lips at a most delicious Cluster of Grapes that he had spied out there.
He fetched a hundred and a hundred leaps at it, till, at last, when he was as weary as a dog, and found that there was no good to be done:
"Hang 'em," says he, "they are as sour as crabs"; and so away he went, turning off the disappointment with a jest.
The Farmer and the Stork
A Farmer placed nets on his newly sown plough lands, and caught a quantity of Cranes, which came to pick up his seed. With them he trapped a Stork also.
The Stork, having his leg fractured by the net, earnestly besought the Farmer to spare his life. "Pray, save me, master," he said, "and let me go free this once. My broken limb should excite your pity. Besides, I am no Crane. I am a Stork, a bird of excellent character; and see how I love and slave for my father and mother. Look, too, at my feathers, they are not the least like to those of a Crane."