But words that's once spoken can't be called back as
you call the cows home at night."
SHALL WE COMPROMISE?
In that period of remote antiquity when all birds of the air and beasts
of the field were able to talk, it befell that a certain shepherd
suffered many losses through the constant depredations of a wolf.
Fearing at length that his means of subsistence would be quite taken
away, he devised a powerful trap for the creature, and set it with
wonderful cunning. He could hardly sleep that night for thinking of the
matter, and early next morning took a stout club in his hand, and set
forth to learn of his success; when, lo! on drawing near the spot, there
he saw the wolf, sure enough, a huge savage, fast held in the trap.
"Ah," cried he, with triumph, "now I have got you!"
The wolf held his peace until the other was quite near, and then in a
tone of the severest moral rebuke, and with a voice that was made quite
low and grave with its weight of judicial reprehension, said,--
"Is it you, then? Can it be one wearing the form of a man, who has laid
this wicked plot against the peace, nay, as I infer from that club,
against the very life, of an innocent creature? Behold what I suffer,
and how unjustly!--I, of all animals, whose life,--the sad state I
am now in constrains me against modesty to say it,--whose life is
notoriously a pattern of all the virtues;--I, too, ungrateful biped,
who have watched your flock through so many sleepless nights, lest some
ill-disposed dog might do harm to the helpless sheep and lambs!"
The shepherd, one of the simplest souls that ever lived, was utterly
confounded by this reproof, and hung his head with shame, unable, for
a season, to utter a word in his own defence.
Pages:
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322