ENVY PUNISHED.
A BURMESE potter, it is said, became envious of the prosperity of a washerman, and to ruin him, induced the king to order him to wash one of his black elephants white, that he might be “lord of the white elephant,” which in the East is a great distinction.
The washerman replied that, by the rules of his art, he must have a vessel large enough to wash him in.
The king ordered the potter to make him such a vessel. When made, it was crushed by the first step of the elephant in it. Many times was this repeated; and the potter was ruined by the very scheme he had intended should crush his enemy.
WINGS.