Collected Fables

by James Thurber

  The bear, deaf to the pleas of his mate, heedless of his neighbors’ advice, and unafraid of the police, kicked over whatever was still standing in the house, and went roaring away for good, taking the most attractive of the attractive female bears, one named Honey, with him.

  MORAL: Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.

  The Goose That Laid the Gilded Egg

  THE GOOSE DIDN’T really lay a gilded egg. She laid an ordinary goose egg, like any other goose egg, and some joker gilded it when she left the nest for a snack or a snail. When she came back and saw the gleaming surprise, she cried, “Lo, I have laid the golden egg of lore and legend!”

  “Lo, my foot,” said a Plymouth Rock hen. “That is an ordinary goose egg painted yellow, if you ask me.”

  “She isn’t asking you,” said a rooster. “She is asking me, and I say that is a solid-gold egg.”

  The goose did not seem overjoyed. “I had my heart set on raising a gosling,” she said.

  “You’ll have a golden gosling,” said the rooster.

  “Golden gosling, my feathers,” said the hen. “She’ll have a yellow gosling, like any other yellow gosling, only punier.”

  “I don’t care what it looks like,” said the goose. “I just don’t want it to be gold. People would talk. They would snatch my quills for souvenirs. I would be photographed all the time.”

  “I will offer you a fabulous sum for that glittering miracle,” said the rooster, and he named a sum fabulous only as things are figured fiscally among the feathered. The goose gladly accepted the offer.

  “I wouldn’t sit on that egg,” said the hen. “I wouldn’t sit on it if a platinum gander encrusted with diamonds came out of it.”

  “I’ll sit on it myself,” said the rooster.

  And so the hopeful rooster rolled the gilded goose egg to a nest and began sitting on it. At the end of three weeks, all the hens left his bed and board.

  “You’ll be sorry,” said the rooster, “when this priceless treasure is hatched. I know it will be a golden goose. I have already named her—Goldie. When she becomes a full-grown goose, I will sell her to the highest bidder for a super-fabulous sum.”

  “Oh, sure,” said the Plymouth Rock hen, “and my family came over on the Mayflower,” and she went away.

  The old positivist sat and sat and sat on the gilded egg, and all his friends drifted away, and no hen would look at him, and his feathers began to fall out. One day, being a male and not a female, he clumsily stepped on the egg and broke it, and that was the end of the egg and the end of his dreams.

  MORAL: It is wiser to be hendubious than cocksure.

  The Trial of the Old Watchdog

  AN OLD EXPERIENCED collie, who had been a faithful country watchdog for many years, was arrested one summer’s day and accused of the first-degree murder of a lamb. Actually, the lamb had been slain by a notorious red fox who had planted the still-warm body of his victim in the collie’s kennel.

  The trial was held in a kangaroo court presided over by Judge Wallaby. The jury consisted of foxes, and all the spectators were foxes. A fox named Reynard was prosecuting attorney. “Morning, Judge,” he said.

  “God bless you, boy, and good luck,” replied Judge Wallaby jovially.

  A poodle named Beau, an old friend and neighbor of the collie, represented the accused watchdog. “Good morning, Judge,” said the poodle.

  “Now I don’t want you to be too clever,” the Judge warned him. “Cleverness should be confined to the weaker side. That’s only fair.”

  A blind woodchuck was the first creature to take the stand, and she testified that she saw the collie kill the lamb.

  “The witness is blind!” protested the poodle.

  “No personalities, please,” said the Judge severely. “Perhaps the witness saw the murder in a dream or a vision. This would give her testimony the authority of revelation.”

  “I wish to call a character witness,” said the poodle.

  “We have no character witnesses,” said Reynard smoothly, “but we have some charming character assassins.”

  One of these, a fox named Burrows, was called to the stand. “I didn’t actually see this lamb killer kill this lamb,” said Burrows, “but I almost did.”

  “That’s close enough,” said Judge Wallaby.

  “Objection,” barked the poodle.

  “Objection overruled,” said the Judge. “It’s getting late. Has the jury reached a verdict?”

  The forefox of the jury stood up. “We find the defendant guilty,” he said, “but we think it would be better to acquit him, nonetheless. If we hang the defendant, his punishment will be over. But if we acquit him of such dark crimes as murder, concealing the body, and associating with poodles and defense attorneys, nobody will ever trust him again, and he will be suspect all the days of his life. Hanging is too good for him, and much too quick.”

  “Guilt by exoneration!” Reynard cried. “What a lovely way to end his usefulness!”

  And so the case was dismissed and court was adjourned, and everybody went home to tell about it.

  MORAL: Thou shalt not blindfold justice by pulling the wool over her eyes.

  The Philosopher and the Oyster

  BY THE SEA on a lovely morning strolled a philosopher—one who seeks a magnificent explanation for his insignificance—and there he came upon an oyster lying in its shell upon the sand.

  “It has no mind to be burdened by doubt,” mused the philosopher, “no fingers to work to the bone. It can never say, ‘My feet are killing me.’ It hears no evil, sees no television, speaks no folly. It has no buttons to come off, no zipper to get caught, no hair or teeth to fall out.” The philosopher sighed a deep sigh of envy. “It produces a highly lustrous concretion, of great price or priceless,” he said, “when a morbid condition obtains in its anatomy, if you could call such an antic, anomalous amorphousness anatomy.” The philosopher sighed again and said, “Would that I could wake from delirium with a circlet of diamonds upon my fevered brow. Would, moreover, that my house were my sanctuary, as sound and secure as a safe-deposit vault.”

  Just then a screaming sea gull swooped out of the sky, picked up the oyster in its claws, carried it high in the air, and let it drop upon a great wet rock, shattering the shell and splattering its occupant. There was no lustrous concretion, of any price whatever, among the debris, for the late oyster had been a very healthy oyster, and, anyway, no oyster ever profited from its pearl.

  MORAL: Count your own blessings, and let your neighbor count his. Where there is no television, the people also perish.

  Tea for One

  A YOUNG HUSBAND was wakened at five o’clock one morning by his bride. “Is the house on fire?” he mumbled. She laughed merrily. “The dawn is here,” she said, “and I am going to bake a sugar cake.”

  “I don’t want a sugar cake, I want toast and coffee,” the bridegroom said.

  “The sugar cake’s for you to take for all the boys to see,” she explained.

  “All what boys?” demanded her husband, who was still drowsy.

  “The boys at the office, silly,” she said. “Let them see it, and then bring it home, and maybe we’ll have it for dinner.”

  He got up and started to dress.

  “I’ll make tea for both of us now,” she said, singing the line, and adding, “Coffee doesn’t rhyme with anything. You can’t have coffee.”

  He had tied his shoes and was tying his tie, when her voice brightened and she clapped her hands. “We’ll raise a family,” she said gaily. “You can have the boy, and I’ll take the girl.” And she scampered down the stairs to start to bake the sugar cake for him to take for all the boys to see. When she had gone, the bridegroom glanced at his watch. It was eleven minutes after five. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, and then he climbed out the bedroom window, dropped to the ground below, and slipped away into the dawn, to find an all-night restaurant where a man could get a meal a man could eat.

  MORAL: I
f life went along like a popular song, every man’s marriage would surely go wrong.

  The Mouse and the Money

  A CITY MOUSE who moved to the country to live in the walls of an old house with a lot of country mice began lording it over them from the start. He trimmed his whiskers, put mousseline in his hair, talked with an accent, and told the country mice that they came from the wrong side of the mouse tracks.

  “My ancestors were of the French aristocracy,” boasted the city mouse. “Our name still appears on bottles of great French wine: Mise du château, which means mice in the chateau, or castle mice.” Every day the newcomer bragged about his forebears, and when he ran out of ancestors he made some up. “My great-great-great-grandfather was a theater mouse at the Comédie-Française, and he married a cathedral mouse, one of the cathedral mice of Chartres. At their wedding a dessert named in their honor, mousse chocolat, was served to millions of guests.”

  Then the city mouse told how his family had come to America in the bridal suite of a great French liner. “My brother is a restaurant mouse at ‘21,’ and my sister’s at the Metropolitan,” he said. He went on to tell of other ancestors of the family who had been in such productions as The Chauve Souris and Die Fledermaus and Les Trois Mousquetaires. “Not a mouse in our house was a common house mouse,” he said.

  One day, wandering through forbidden walls of the country house, to show his inferiors that he knew his way around, he came upon a treasure in currency which someone had hidden years before between the plaster and the lath. “I wouldn’t eat that stuff,” warned an old country mouse. “It is the root of evil and it will give you greenback bellyache.” But the city mouse did not listen.

  “I’m already a mouse of distinction,” said the city mouse, “and this money will make me a millionaire. I’ll be loaded.” So he began to eat the currency, which consisted of bills of large denominations, and he drove off one or two of the young country mice who wanted to help him eat the treasure, saying, “Finders are not their brothers’ keepers.” The city mouse told his country cousins, “Blessed are the rich, for they can pay their way into the kingdom of Heaven,” and he got off a lot of other witticisms, such as “Legal tender is the night” and “Money makes the nightmare go.”

  And so he went on living, as he put it, on the fat of the lath. “When I have eaten it all,” he said, “I shall return to the city and live like a king. They say you can’t take it with you, but I’m going to take it with me.”

  In a few days and nights the arrogant city mouse with the fancy and fanciful French forebears had eaten all the money, which amounted to an ambassador’s annual salary. Then he tried to leave the walls of the old country house, but he was so loaded with money, and his head was so swelled, that he got caught between the plaster and the lath and could not get out, and his neighbors could not dislodge him, and so he died in the walls, and nobody but the country mice knew that he had been the richest mouse in the world.

  MORAL: This is the posture of fortune’s slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.

  The Wolf at the Door

  MR. AND MRS. SHEEP were sitting in their sitting room with their daughter, who was as pretty as she was edible, when there was a knock at the front door. “It’s a gentleman caller,” said the daughter.

  “It’s the Fuller Brush man,” said her mother. The cautious father got up and looked out the window. “It’s the wolf,” he said. “I can see his tail.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said the mother. “It’s the Fuller Brush man, and that’s his brush.” And she went to the door and opened it, and the wolf came in and ran away with the daughter.

  “You were right, after all,” admitted the mother, sheepishly.

  MORAL: Mother doesn’t always know best. (The italics are father’s and daughter’s and mine.)

  What Happened to Charles

  A FARM HORSE named Charles was led to town one day by his owner, to be shod. He would have been shod and brought back home without incident if it hadn’t been for Eva, a duck, who was always hanging about the kitchen door of the farmhouse, eavesdropping, and never got anything quite right. Her farmmates said of her that she had two mouths but only one ear.

  On the day that Charles was led away to the smithy, Eva went quacking about the farm, excitedly telling the other animals that Charles had been taken to town to be shot.

  “They’re executing an innocent horse!” cried Eva. “He’s a hero! He’s a martyr! He died to make us free!”

  “He was the greatest horse in the world,” sobbed a sentimental hen.

  “He just seemed like old Charley to me,” said a realistic cow. “Let’s not get into a moony mood.”

  “He was wonderful!” cried a gullible goose.

  “What did he ever do?” asked a goat.

  Eva, who was as inventive as she was inaccurate, turned on her lively imagination. “It was butchers who led him off to be shot!” she shrieked. “They would have cut our throats while we slept if it hadn’t been for Charles!”

  “I didn’t see any butchers, and I can see a burnt-out firefly on a moonless night,” said a barn owl. “I didn’t hear any butchers, and I can hear a mouse walk across moss.”

  “We must build a memorial to Charles the Great, who saved our lives,” quacked Eva. And all the birds and beasts in the barnyard except the wise owl, the skeptical goat, and the realistic cow set about building a memorial.

  Just then the farmer appeared in the lane, leading Charles, whose new shoes glinted in the sunlight.

  It was lucky that Charles was not alone, for the memorial-builders might have set upon him with clubs and stones for replacing their hero with just plain old Charley. It was lucky, too, that they could not reach the barn owl, who quickly perched upon the weathervane of the barn, for none is so exasperating as he who is right. The sentimental hen and the gullible goose were the ones who finally called attention to the true culprit—Eva, the one-eared duck with two mouths.

  The others set upon her and tarred and unfeathered her, for none is more unpopular than the bearer of sad tidings that turn out to be false.

  MORAL: Get it right or let it alone. The conclusion you jump to may be your own.

  The Daws on the Dial

  A YOUNG JACKDAW* told his father that he was going to build his nest on the minute hand of the town clock. “That’s the most unthinkable thing you ever thought of,” said old John Daw. Young Jack was not deterred. “We’ll build our nest when the minute hand is level,” he said, “at a quarter of or a quarter after.”

  “Those who live in castles in the air have nowhere to go but down,” the old Daw warned, but Jack and his mate built their nest on the clock at a quarter after eight the next morning. At twenty minutes after eight the nest slipped off the minute hand and fell into the street below. “We didn’t start early enough,” the young Daw told his father that evening. “Better never than late. We’ll try again tomorrow at a quarter after six.”

  “If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again,” said the elder Daw. But he might as well have been talking to a gargoyle. Jack and his mate stole some of the elder Daw’s silverware and built their nest again the following morning, and again it slipped off the minute hand and fell into the street below.

  That evening old John Daw had more to say to his reckless offspring. “To stick on a dial, you would need three feet, one of them a rabbit’s. Don’t hang heavy on time’s hands, just because it hangs heavy on yours. Clockwise is not wise enough. Even the cyclone and the merry-go-round know that much.”

  And again the young Daws did not listen, and again they swiped some silverware from his parents’ nest to furnish their own. This time, those human beings known as municipal authorities were concealed in the clock tower, and, with brooms and yells and stones and bells, they frightened the foolish Daws away from the clock and the tower and the town.

  That night old John Daw’s mate counted her silverware and sighed with dismay. “Gone, alas, with our youth, two spoons,”
she said, “and half the knives, and most of the forks, and all of the napkin rings.”

  “If I told him once, I told him a hundred times, ‘Neither a burglar nor a lender be,’” raged old John, “but I might as well have been talking to a cast-iron lawn Daw.” Not a word was heard from the young Daws as the weeks went on. “No news is bad news,” grumbled old John Daw. “They have probably built their nest this time on a wagon wheel, or inside a bell.”

  He was wrong about that. The young Daws had built their last nest in the muzzle of a cannon, and they heard only the first gun of a twenty-one-gun salute fired in honor of a visiting chief of state.

  MORAL: The saddest words of pen or tongue are wisdom’s wasted on the young.

  The Tiger Who Would Be King

  ONE MORNING THE tiger woke up in the jungle and told his mate that he was king of beasts.

  “Leo, the lion, is king of beasts,” she said.

  “We need a change,” said the tiger. “The creatures are crying for a change.”

  The tigress listened but she could hear no crying, except that of her cubs.

  “I’ll be king of beasts by the time the moon rises,” said the tiger. “It will be a yellow moon with black stripes, in my honor.”