Collected Fables

by James Thurber

  MORAL: Thou shalt not convert thy neighbor’s wife, nor yet louse up thy neighbor’s life.

  The Human Being and the Dinosaur

  AGES AGO in a wasteland of time and a wilderness of space, Man, in upper case, and dinosaur, in lower, first came face to face. They stood like stones for a long while, wary and watchful, taking each other in. Something told the dinosaur that he beheld before him the coming glory and terror of the world, and in the still air of the young planet he seemed to catch the faint smell of his own inevitable doom.

  “Greetings, stupid,” said Man. “Behold in me the artfully articulated architect of the future, the chosen species, the certain survivor, the indestructible one, the monarch of all you survey, and of all that everyone else surveys, for that matter. On the other hand, you are, curiously enough, for all your size, a member of the inconsequent ephemera. You are one of God’s moderately amusing early experiments, a frail footnote to natural history, a contraption in a museum for future Man to marvel at, an excellent example of Jehovah’s jejune juvenilia.”

  The dinosaur sighed with a sound like thunder.

  “Perpetuating your species,” Man continued, “would be foolish and futile.”

  “The missing link is not lost,” said the dinosaur sorrowfully. “It’s hiding.”

  Man paid the doomed dinosaur no mind. “If there were no Man it would be necessary to create one,” said Man, “for God moves in mysterious, but inefficient, ways, and He needs help. Man will go on forever, but you will be one with the mammoth and the mastodon, for monstrosity is the behemother of extinction.”

  “There are worse things than being extinct,” said the dinosaur sourly, “and one of them is being you.”

  Man strutted a little pace and flexed his muscles. “You cannot even commit murder,” he said, “for murder requires a mind. You are capable only of dinosaurslaughter. You and your ilk are incapable of devising increasingly effective methods of destroying your own species and, at the same time, increasingly miraculous methods of keeping it extant. You will never live to know the two-party system, the multi-party system, and the one-party system. You will be gone long before I have made this the best of all possible worlds, no matter how possible all other worlds may be. In your highest state of evolution you could not develop the brain cells to prove innocent men guilty, even after their acquittal. You are all wrong in the crotch, and in the cranium, and in the cortex. But I have wasted enough time on you. I must use these fingers which God gave me, and now probably wishes He had kept for Himself, to begin writing those noble volumes about Me which will one day run to several hundred billion items, many of them about war, death, conquest, decline, fall, blood, sweat, tears, threats, warnings, boasts, hopelessness, hell, heels, and whores. There will be little enough about you and your ilk and your kith and your kin, for after all, who were you and your ilk and your kith and your kin? Good day and goodbye,” said Man in conclusion. “I shall see to it that your species receives a decent burial, with some simple ceremony.”

  Man, as it turned out, was right. The dinosaur and his ilk and his kith and his kin died not long after, still in lower case, but with a curious smile of satisfaction, or something of the sort, on their ephemeral faces.

  MORAL: The noblest study of mankind is Man, says Man.

  The Hen Party

  ALL THE HENS came to Lady Buff Orpington’s tea party and, as usual, Minnie Minorca was the last to arrive, for, as usual, she had spent the day with her psychiatrist, her internist, and her beak, comb, and gizzard specialist. “I’m not long for this barnyard,” she told the other hens. “What do you suppose I’ve got now?” She went about the room, giving all the hens a peck except her hostess, who pecked her, but without affection.

  “I’ve got blue comb,” Minnie went on.

  A chill had fallen upon the gathering, as it always did when Minnie Minorca began reciting her complaints, old and new, real and hysterical. “Dr. Leghorn found out today that I am edentulous, and he told me so,” said Minnie, triumphantly. “Of course I’ve always had chronic coryza, Newcastle disease, and laryngotracheitis.”

  “Minnie has so many pains she has given each of us one,” said Lady Buff Orpington coldly. “Isn’t that nice?”

  “I love you girls,” said Minnie, “and I love to share my troubles with you. You’re such good listeners. I was telling my psychiatrist about my new ailments, including incipient dry feather, and he suddenly blurted out some of the things he has been keeping from me all these years. He said I have galloping aggression, inflamed ego, and too much gall.”

  “Now there’s a psychiatrist who knows what he’s talking about,” said Miss Brahma, and she tried to talk to her hostess about the weather, and the other hens tried to talk to one another, but Minnie Minorca kept on telling how charged with punishments her scroll was. As she rambled on, describing in detail the attack of scale foot she had had in Cadawcutt, Connecticut, one of the hens whispered, “I’ve just put some sleeping pills in her teacup.”

  “You must have some more tea,” cried Lady Buff Orpington, as she refilled Minnie’s cup, and all her guests repeated, “You must have some more tea,” and Minnie Minorca, delighted to be the center of attention and, as she thought, concern, hastily drank the slugged tea. After she had passed out, one of the hens suggested that they wring her neck while the wringing was good. “We could say she broke her neck trying to see what was the matter with her tail,” the conspirator suggested.

  Lady Buff Orpington sighed and said, “We’ll draw lots to see who wrings her neck at the next tea party someone gives. Now let’s go out and take a dust bath and leave old Fuss and Fevers to her nightmares.” And the hostess and her guests went out into the road, leaving Minnie Minorca to dream of a brand-new ailment, called Minnieitis, or Mrs. Minorca’s disease.

  MORAL: Misery’s love of company oft goeth unrequited.

  The Rose, the Fountain, and the Dove

  IN A GREEN valley, serene as a star and silent as the moon—except for the Saturday laughter of children and the sound of summer thunder—a rose and a fountain grew restless as time crept on.

  “This is our sorrow: we’re here today and here tomorrow,” sighed the rose. “I wish I were rootloose and fancy-free, like the dove.”

  “I want to see what’s in the wood,” the fountain said. “I want to have adventures to cherish and regret.” He signalled the dove in a cipher of sparkle, and the dove came down from the sky and made a graceful landing.

  “What’s in the wood?” the fountain asked. “You have wings and you must know, for there’s nowhere you cannot go.”

  “I like to fly above the green valley,” said the dove. “The green valley is all I know, and all I want to know.”

  “Stars fall in a pool in the wood,” the rose declared. “I hear them sputter when they strike the water. I could fish them up and dry them out and sell them to a king, if I had wings like you,” she told the dove.

  “I like it where I am,” the dove replied, “flying above the valley. I watch the stars that do not fall, and would not want to sell them.”

  “It is always the same wherever one is,” complained the rose.

  “To my eye, it is always changing,” said the dove.

  “I am weary of playing in this one spot forever,” whimpered the fountain. “The same old patterns every day. Help, help, another spray!”

  “There’s nothing in the wood, I think, but horned owls in hollow oaks,” the dove declared, “and violets by mossy stones.”

  “Violence by mossy stones is what I crave!” the fountain cried. “I’d love to meet the waterfall in silver combat, and damned be him who first dries up!”

  “I have nothing to remember and nothing to forget,” sighed the rose. “I waste my sweetness on the verdant air.”

  “I like it here” was all the dove would say. But the rose and the fountain kept after him every day of every week, and when the summer waned, they convinced the dove he loved the wood, admired horned owls, and ou
ght to spend his life salvaging stars and meeting waterfalls in silver combat.

  So the dove flew away into the wood and never came back. There were many varied rumors of the nature of his end. The four winds whispered that the dove had ceased to be because of mossy stones, half-hidden violets, or violence, malicious waterfalls, and owls in trees, but the wood thrush contended the dove had died while playing with burning stars. One thing was sure: the dove had ended the way no other dove had ever ended.

  MORAL: He who lives another’s life another’s death must die.

  The Bachelor Penguin and the Virtuous Mate

  ONE SPRING a bachelor penguin’s fancy lightly turned, as it did in every season, to thoughts of illicit love. It was this gay seducer’s custom to make passes at the more desirable females after their mates had gone down to the sea to fish. He had found out that all the females in the community made a ritual of rearranging the sitting-room furniture, putting it back where it had been the day before, and they were only too glad to have a strong male help them move the heavier pieces. Their mates had grown less and less interested in housework and more and more addicted to fishing, as time went on. The bachelor penguin proved handy at putting on or taking off screen doors, removing keys wedged in locks meant for other keys, and rescuing the females from other quandaries of their own making. After a few visits, the feathered Don Juan induced the ladies to play Hide-in-the-Dark with him, and Guess Who This Is?, and Webfooty-Webfooty.

  As the seasons rolled on, the handsome and well-groomed Casanova became a little jaded by his routine successes with the opposite sex. Then one morning, after the other male penguins had gone to the seashore to fish as usual, Don J. Penguin spied the prettiest female he had ever seen, trying, all by herself, to move a sitting-room sofa back to the spot where it had been the day before. Don gallantly offered to help the matron in distress and she gladly accepted, with a shy look and a faint blush. The next morning the bachelor, who knew how to play his cards, came back and helped the housepenguin put on the screen door, and the following day he fixed the broken catch of her necklace, and the day after that he tightened the glass top of her percolator. Each time that he suggested playing Hide-in-the-Dark or Guess Who This Is?, the object of his desire thought of something else for him to fix, or loosen, or tighten, or take off, or put on. After several weeks of this, the amorist began to suspect that he was being taken, and his intended victim corroborated his fears.

  “Unless you keep on helping me take things off, and put things on, and pry things loose, and make things tighter,” she told the dismayed collector of broken hearts, “I will tell my mate about your improper advances and your dishonorable intentions.” Don Penguin knew that the clever penguin’s mate was the strongest male in the community, and also had the shortest temper and the least patience. There wasn’t going to be any Hide-in-the-Dark or Guess Who This Is? or Webfooty-Webfooty. And so he spent the rest of his days working for the virtuous and guileful lady of his desire, moving sofas, taking things off and putting things on, loosening this and tightening that, and performing whatever other tasks his fair captor demanded of him. His bow tie became untied, his dinner jacket lost its buttons, his trousers lost their crease, and his eyes lost their dream. He babbled of clocks, and of keys caught in locks, and everybody closed her door when he came waddling down the street except the penguin who had taken him in with a beauty as unattainable as the stars, and a shy look, and a faint blush as phony as a parrot’s laugh. One day her mate, returning early from the sea, caught a glimpse of Don leaving the house, and said, “What did old Droop Feather want?”

  “Oh, he washes the windows and waxes the floors and sweeps the chimney,” the female replied. “I believe he had an unhappy love affair.”

  MORAL: One man’s mate may sometimes be another man’s prison.

  The Peacelike Mongoose

  IN COBRA COUNTRY a mongoose was born one day who didn’t want to fight cobras or anything else. The word spread from mongoose to mongoose that there was a mongoose who didn’t want to fight cobras. If he didn’t want to fight anything else, it was his own business, but it was the duty of every mongoose to kill cobras or be killed by cobras.

  “Why?” asked the peacelike mongoose, and the word went around that the strange new mongoose was not only pro-cobra and anti-mongoose but intellectually curious and against the ideals and traditions of mongoosism.

  “He is crazy,” cried the young mongoose’s father.

  “He is sick,” said his mother.

  “He is a coward,” shouted his brothers.

  “He is a mongoosexual,” whispered his sisters.

  Strangers who had never laid eyes on the peacelike mongoose remembered that they had seen him crawling on his stomach, or trying on cobra hoods, or plotting the violent overthrow of Mongoosia.

  “I am trying to use reason and intelligence,” said the strange new mongoose.

  “Reason is six-sevenths of treason,” said one of his neighbors.

  “Intelligence is what the enemy uses,” said another.

  Finally, the rumor spread that the mongoose had venom in his sting, like a cobra, and he was tried, convicted by a show of paws, and condemned to banishment.

  MORAL: Ashes to ashes, and clay to clay, if the enemy doesn’t get you your own folks may.

  The Godfather and His Godchild

  A WORLDLY-WISE COLLECTOR, who had trotted the globe collecting everything he could shoot, or buy, or make off with, called upon his godchild, a little girl of five, after a year of collecting in various countries of the world.

  “I want to give you three things,” he said. “Any three things your heart desires. I have diamonds from Africa, and a rhinoceros horn, scarabs from Egypt, emeralds from Guatemala, chessmen of ivory and gold, mooses’ antlers, signal drums, ceremonial gongs, temple bells, and three rare and remarkable dolls. Now tell me,” he concluded, patting the little girl on the head, “what do you want more than anything else in the world?”

  His little godchild, who was not a hesitater, did not hesitate. “I want to break your glasses and spit on your shoes,” she said.

  MORAL: Though statisticians in our time have never kept score, Man wants a great deal here below and Woman even more.

  The Grizzly and the Gadgets

  A GRIZZLY BEAR who had been on a bender for several weeks following a Christmas party in his home at which his brother-in-law had set the Christmas tree on fire, his children had driven the family car through the front door and out the back, and all the attractive female bears had gone into hibernation before sunset returned home prepared to forgive, and live and let live. He found, to his mild annoyance, that the doorbell had been replaced by an ornamental knocker. When he lifted the knocker, he was startled to hear it play two bars of “Silent Night.”

  When nobody answered his knock, he turned the doorknob, which said “Happy New Year” in a metallic voice, and a two-tone gong rang “Hello” somewhere deep within the house.

  He called to his mate, who was always the first to lay the old aside, as well as the first by whom the new was tried, and got no answer. This was because the walls of his house had been soundproofed by a soundproofer who had soundproofed them so well nobody could hear anybody say anything six feet away. Inside the living room the grizzly bear turned on the light switch, and the lights went on all right, but the turning of the switch had also released an odor of pine cones, which this particular bear had always found offensive. The head of the house, now becoming almost as angry as he had been on Christmas Day, sank into an easy chair and began bouncing up and down and up and down, for it was a brand-new contraption called “Sitpretty” which made you bounce up and down and up and down when you sat on it. Now thoroughly exasperated, the bear jumped up from the chair and began searching for a cigarette. He found a cigarette box, a new-fangled cigarette box he had never seen before, which was made of metal and plastic in the shape of a castle, complete with portal and drawbridge and tower. The trouble was that the bear couldn’t
get the thing open. Then he made out, in tiny raised letters on the portal, a legend in rhyme: “You can have a cigarette on me if you can find the castle key.” The bear could not find the castle key, and he threw the trick cigarette box through a windowpane out into the front yard, letting in a blast of cold air, and he howled when it hit the back of his neck. He was a little mollified when he found that he had a cigar in his pocket, but no matches, and so he began looking around the living room for a matchbox. At last he saw one on a shelf. There were matches in it, all right, but no scratching surface on which to scratch them. On the bottom of the box, however, there was a neat legend explaining this lack. The message on the box read: “Safety safety matches are doubly safe because there is no dangerous dangerous sandpaper surface to scratch them on. Strike them on a windowpane or on the seat of your pants.”

  Enraged, infuriated, beside himself, seeing red and thinking black, the grizzly bear began taking the living room apart. He pounded the matchbox into splinters, knocked over lamps, pulled pictures off the wall, threw rugs out of the broken window, swept vases and a clock off the mantelpiece, and overturned chairs and tables, growling and howling and roaring, shouting and bawling and cursing, until his wife was aroused from a deep dream of marrying a panda, neighbors appeared from blocks around, and the attractive female bears who had gone into hibernation began coming out of it to see what was going on.