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The Netherlands were fast slipping beyond his control, to be sure, as he engaged in these endless schemes; and ill-disposed people of the day said that the king was like Aesop's dog, lapping the river dry in order to get at the skins floating on the surface.
But the people of Seleucia had reason to commend the wisdom of Aesop's fable of the wallet, seeing their general Surena carrying a bag full of loose Milesian stories before him, but keeping behind him a whole Parthian Sybaris in his many wagons full of concubines; like the vipers and asps people talk of, all the foremost and more visible parts fierce and terrible with spears and arrows and horsemen, but the rear terminating in loose women and castanets, music of the lute, and midnight revellings.
But let not a man trust his victory over his nature, too far; for nature will lay buried a great time, and yet revive, upon the occasion or temptation. Like as it was with AEsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demutely at the board's end, till a mouse ran before her.
There are certain standard incidents, which are common property such as the discovery of relationships the change of children and liberal aunts, who make nothing of presenting a young married couple with twenty or thirty thousand pounds on their wedding day; but, if any young lady or gentleman is silly enough to marry, without the means of support, because they have read such things in novels, and have also read of rich uncles all of a sudden returning from the East or West Indies, to shower gold and pearls on all their relations, all that must be said for them is, that they have not sufficient sense to read "Aesop's Fables," and they might as easily be misled into the imagination that brutes could talk.
There are three sections in the Project Gutenberg, basically described as: Light Literature; such as Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, Peter Pan, Aesop's Fables, etc.; Heavy Literature; such as the Bible or other religious documents, Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, etc.; and References; such as Roget's Thesaurus, almanacs, and a set of encyclopedia, dictionaries, etc.
Of grammar, until some years later, I learnt no more than the inflections of the nouns and verbs, but, after a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation; and I faintly remember going through Aesop's Fables, the first Greek book which I read. The Anabasis, which I remember better, was the second. I learnt no Latin until my eighth year.
Barnum's humane endeavors longer than Aesop's or Pilpays' fables combined, and it is impossible to relate them all.
Let us suppose that I am asking some kushto Rommany chal for a version of AEsop's fable of the youth and the cat. He is sitting comfortably by the fire, and good ale has put him into a story-telling humour. I begin "Now then, tell me this adree Rommanis, in Gipsy Once upon a time there was a young man who had a cat." Gipsy. "Yeckorus 'pre yeck cheirus a raklo lelled a matchka"
Nay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only shortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not like Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than living.
"A new Preface" is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the Moral appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn what I have to say here. This tale forms a natural sequence to a former one, which some may remember, entitled "Elsie Venner."
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