MORAL: It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.
The Bear Who Let It Alone
IN THE WOODS of the Far West there once lived a brown bear who could take it or let it alone. He would go into a bar where they sold mead, a fermented drink made of honey, and he would have just two drinks. Then he would put some money on the bar and say, “See what the bears in the back room will have,” and he would go home. But finally he took to drinking by himself most of the day. He would reel home at night, kick over the umbrella stand, knock down the bridge lamps, and ram his elbows through the windows. Then he would collapse on the floor and lie there until he went to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed and his children were very frightened.
At length the bear saw the error of his ways and began to reform. In the end he became a famous teetotaller and a persistent temperance lecturer. He would tell everybody that came to his house about the awful effects of drink, and he would boast about how strong and well he had become since he gave up touching the stuff. To demonstrate this, he would stand on his head and on his hands and he would turn cartwheels in the house, kicking over the umbrella stand, knocking down the bridge lamps, and ramming his elbows through the windows. Then he would lie down on the floor, tired by his healthful exercise, and go to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed and his children were very frightened.
MORAL: You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
The Owl Who Was God
ONCE UPON A starless midnight there was an owl who sat on the branch of an oak tree. Two ground moles tried to slip quietly by, unnoticed. “You!” said the owl. “Who?” they quavered, in fear and astonishment, for they could not believe it was possible for anyone to see them in that thick darkness. “You two!” said the owl. The moles hurried away and told the other creatures of the field and forest that the owl was the greatest and wisest of all animals because he could see in the dark and because he could answer any question. “I’ll see about that,” said a secretary bird, and he called on the owl one night when it was again very dark. “How many claws am I holding up?” said the secretary bird. “Two,” said the owl, and that was right. “Can you give me another expression for ‘that is to say’ or ‘namely’?” asked the secretary bird. “To wit,” said the owl. “Why does a lover call on his love?” asked the secretary bird. “To woo,” said the owl.
The secretary bird hastened back to the other creatures and reported that the owl was indeed the greatest and wisest animal in the world because he could see in the dark and because he could answer any question. “Can he see in the daytime, too?” asked a red fox. “Yes,” echoed a dormouse and a French poodle. “Can he see in the daytime, too?” All the other creatures laughed loudly at this silly question, and they set upon the red fox and his friends and drove them out of the region. Then they sent a messenger to the owl and asked him to be their leader.
When the owl appeared among the animals it was high noon and the sun was shining brightly. He walked very slowly, which gave him an appearance of great dignity, and he peered about him with large, staring eyes, which gave him an air of tremendous importance. “He’s God!” screamed a Plymouth Rock hen. And the others took up the cry, “He’s God!” So they followed him wherever he went and when he began to bump into things they began to bump into things, too. Finally he came to a concrete highway and he started up the middle of it and all the other creatures followed him. Presently a hawk, who was acting as outrider, observed a truck coming toward them at fifty miles an hour, and he reported to the secretary bird and the secretary bird reported to the owl. “There’s danger ahead,” said the secretary bird. “To wit?” said the owl. The secretary bird told him. “Aren’t you afraid?” he asked. “Who?” said the owl calmly, for he could not see the truck. “He’s God!” cried all the creatures again, and they were still crying “He’s God!” when the truck hit them and ran them down. Some of the animals were merely injured, but most of them, including the owl, were killed.
MORAL: You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
The Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing
NOT VERY LONG ago there were two sheep who put on wolf’s clothing and went among the wolves as spies, to see what was going on. They arrived on a fete day, when all the wolves were singing in the taverns or dancing in the street. The first sheep said to his companion, “Wolves are just like us, for they gambol and frisk. Every day is fete day in Wolfland.” He made some notes on a piece of paper (which a spy should never do) and he headed them “My Twenty-Four Hours in Wolfland,” for he had decided not to be a spy any longer but to write a book on Wolfland and also some articles for the Sheep’s Home Companion. The other sheep guessed what he was planning to do, so he slipped away and began to write a book called “My Ten Hours in Wolfland.” The first sheep suspected what was up when he found his friend had gone, so he wired a book to his publisher called “My Five Hours in Wolfland,” and it was announced for publication first. The other sheep immediately sold his manuscript to a newspaper syndicate for serialization.
Both sheep gave the same message to their fellows: wolves were just like sheep, for they gambolled and frisked, and every day was fete day in Wolfland. The citizens of Sheepland were convinced by all this, so they drew in their sentinels and they let down their barriers. When the wolves descended on them one night, howling and slavering, the sheep were as easy to kill as flies on a windowpane.
MORAL: Don’t get it right, just get it written.
The Stork Who Married a Dumb Wife
A DANISH STORK was in the habit of spending six nights a week out on the town with the boys, drinking and dicing and playing the match game. His wife had never left their nest, which was on a chimney top, since he married her, for he did not want her to get wise to the ways of the male. When he got home, which was usually at four o’clock in the morning—unless the party had gone on to Reuben’s—he always brought her a box of candy and handed it to her together with a stork story, which is the same as a cock-and-bull story. “I’ve been out delivering babies,” he would say. “It’s killing me, but it is my duty to go on.” “Who do you deliver babies for?” she asked one morning. “Human beings,” he said. “A human being cannot have a baby without help from someone. All the other animals can, but human beings are helpless. They depend on the other animals for everything from food and clothing to companionship.” Just then the phone rang and the stork answered it. “Another baby on the way,” he said when he had hung up. “I’ll have to go out again tonight.” So that night he went out again and did not get home until seven-thirty in the morning. “Thish was very special case,” he said, handing his wife a box of candy. “Five girls.” He did not add that the five girls were all blondes in their twenties.
After a while the female stork got to thinking. Her husband had told her never to leave the nest, because the world was full of stork traps, but she began to doubt this. So she flew out into the world, looking and listening. In this way she learned to tell time and to take male talk with a grain of salt; she found out that candy is dandy, as the poet has said, but that licker is quicker; she discovered that the offspring of the human species are never brought into the world by storks. This last discovery was a great blow to her, but it was a greater blow to Papa when he came home the next morning at a quarter to six. “Hello, you phony obstetrician,” said his wife coldly. “How are all the blonde quintuplets today?” And she crowned him with a chimney brick.
MORAL: The male was made to lie and roam, but woman’s place is in the home.
The Green Isle in the Sea
ONE SWEET MORNING in the Year of Our Lord, Nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, a little old gentleman got up and threw wide the windows of his bedroom, letting in the living sun. A black widow spider, who had been dozing on the balcony, slashed at him, and although she missed, she did not miss very far. The old gentleman went downstairs to the dining-room and was just sitting down to a splendid breakfast when his
grandson, a boy named Burt, pulled the chair from under him. The old man’s hip was strained but it was fortunately not broken.
Out in the street, as he limped toward a little park with many trees, which was to him a green isle in the sea, the old man was tripped up by a gaily-colored hoop sent rolling at him, with a kind of disinterested deliberation, by a grim little girl. Hobbling on a block farther, the old man was startled, but not exactly surprised, when a bold daylight robber stuck a gun in his ribs. “Put ’em up, Mac,” said the robber, “and come across.” Mac put them up and came across with his watch and money and a gold ring his mother had given him when he was a boy.
When at last the old gentleman staggered into the little park, which had been to him a fountain and a shrine, he saw that half the trees had been killed by a blight, and the other half by a bug. Their leaves were gone and they no longer afforded any protection from the skies, so that the hundred planes which appeared suddenly overhead had an excellent view of the little old gentleman through their bombing-sights.
MORAL: The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings, and you know how happy kings are.
The Crow and the Oriole
ONCE UPON A TIME a crow fell in love with a Baltimore oriole. He had seen her flying past his nest every spring on her way North and every autumn on her way South, and he had decided that she was a tasty dish. He had observed that she came North every year with a different gentleman, but he paid no attention to the fact that all the gentlemen were Baltimore orioles. “Anybody can have that mouse,” he said to himself. So he went to his wife and told her that he was in love with a Baltimore oriole who was as cute as a cuff link. He said he wanted a divorce, so his wife gave him one simply by opening the door and handing him his hat. “Don’t come crying to me when she throws you down,” she said. “That fly-by-season hasn’t got a brain in her head. She can’t cook or sew. Her upper register sounds like a streetcar taking a curve. You can find out in any dictionary that the crow is the smartest and most capable of birds—or was till you became one.” “Tush!” said the male crow. “Pish! You are simply a jealous woman.” He tossed her a few dollars. “Here,” he said, “go buy yourself some finery. You look like the bottom of an old teakettle.” And off he went to look for the oriole.
This was in the springtime and he met her coming North with an oriole he had never seen before. The crow stopped the female oriole and pleaded his cause—or should we say cawed his pleas? At any rate, he courted her in a harsh, grating voice, which made her laugh merrily. “You sound like an old window shutter,” she said, and she snapped her fingers at him. “I am bigger and stronger than your gentleman friend,” said the crow. “I have a vocabulary larger than his. All the orioles in the country couldn’t even lift the corn I own. I am a fine sentinel and my voice can be heard for miles in case of danger.” “I don’t see how that could interest anybody but another crow,” said the female oriole, and she laughed at him and flew on toward the North. The male oriole tossed the crow some coins. “Here,” he said, “go buy yourself a blazer or something. You look like the bottom of an old coffeepot.”
The crow flew back sadly to his nest, but his wife was not there. He found a note pinned to the front door. “I have gone away with Bert,” it read. “You will find some arsenic in the medicine chest.”
MORAL: Even the llama should stick to mamma.
The Elephant Who Challenged the World
AN ELEPHANT WHO lived in Africa woke up one morning with the conviction that he could defeat all the other animals in the world in single combat, one at a time. He wondered that he hadn’t thought of it before. After breakfast he called first on the lion. “You are only the King of Beasts,” bellowed the elephant, “whereas I am the Ace!” and he demonstrated his prowess by knocking the lion out in fifteen minutes, no holds barred. Then in quick succession he took on the wild boar, the water buffalo, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, the zebra, the eagle, and the vulture, and he conquered them all. After that the elephant spent most of his time in bed eating peanuts, while the other animals, who were now his slaves, built for him the largest house any animal in the world had ever had. It was five stories high, solidly made of the hardest woods to be found in Africa. When it was finished, the Ace of Beasts moved in and announced that he could pin back the ears of any animal in the world. He challenged all comers to meet him in the basement of the big house, where he had set up a prize ring ten times the regulation size.
Several days went by and then the elephant got an anonymous letter accepting his challenge. “Be in your basement tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock,” the message read. So at three o’clock the next day the elephant went down to the basement to meet his mysterious opponent, but there was no one there, or at least no one he could see. “Come out from behind whatever you’re behind!” roared the elephant. “I’m not behind anything,” said a tiny voice. The elephant tore around the basement, upsetting barrels and boxes, banging his head against the furnace pipes, rocking the house on its foundations, but he could not find his opponent. At the end of an hour the elephant roared that the whole business was a trick and a deceit—probably ventriloquism—and that he would never come down to the basement again. “Oh, yes you will,” said the tiny voice. “You will be down here at three o’clock tomorrow and you’ll end up on your back.” The elephant’s laughter shook the house. “We’ll see about that,” he said.
The next afternoon the elephant, who slept on the fifth floor of the house, woke up at two-thirty o’clock and looked at his wristwatch. “Nobody I can’t see will ever get me down to the basement again,” he growled, and went back to sleep. At exactly three o’clock the house began to tremble and quiver as if an earthquake had it in its paws. Pillars and beams bent and broke like reeds, for they were all drilled full of tiny holes. The fifth floor gave way completely and crashed down upon the fourth, which fell upon the third, which fell upon the second, which carried away the first as if it had been the floor of a berry basket. The elephant was precipitated into the basement, where he fell heavily upon the concrete floor and lay there on his back, completely unconscious. A tiny voice began to count him out. At the count of ten the elephant came to, but he could not get up. “What animal are you?” he demanded of the mysterious voice in a quavering tone which had lost its menace. “I am the termite,” answered the voice.
The other animals, straining and struggling for a week, finally got the elephant lifted out of the basement and put him in jail. He spent the rest of his life there, broken in spirit and back.
MORAL: The battle is sometimes to the small, for the bigger they are the harder they fall.
The Birds and the Foxes
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a bird sanctuary in which hundreds of Baltimore orioles lived together happily. The refuge consisted of a forest entirely surrounded by a high wire fence. When it was put up, a pack of foxes who lived nearby protested that it was an arbitrary and unnatural boundary. However, they did nothing about it at the time because they were interested in civilizing the geese and ducks on the neighboring farms. When all the geese and ducks had been civilized, and there was nothing else left to eat, the foxes once more turned their attention to the bird sanctuary. Their leader announced that there had once been foxes in the sanctuary but that they had been driven out. He proclaimed that Baltimore orioles belonged in Baltimore. He said, furthermore, that the orioles in the sanctuary were a continuous menace to the peace of the world. The other animals cautioned the foxes not to disturb the birds in their sanctuary.
So the foxes attacked the sanctuary one night and tore down the fence that surrounded it. The orioles rushed out and were instantly killed and eaten by the foxes.
The next day the leader of the foxes, a fox from whom God was receiving daily guidance, got upon the rostrum and addressed the other foxes. His message was simple and sublime. “You see before you,” he said, “another Lincoln. We have liberated all those birds!”
MORAL: Government of the orioles, by the foxes, and for the foxes, must perish from the earth.
The Courtship of Arthur and Al
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a young beaver named Al and an older beaver named Arthur. They were both in love with a pretty little female. She looked with disfavor upon the young beaver’s suit because he was a harum-scarum and a ne’er-do-well. He had never done a single gnaw of work in his life, for he preferred to eat and sleep and to swim lazily in the streams and to play Now-I’ll-Chase-You with the girls. The older beaver had never done anything but work from the time he got his first teeth. He had never played anything with anybody.
Collected Fables Page 4
