Collected Fables

by James Thurber

  “Corn is for the commoner,” said the rabbit scornfully.

  “You can have your carrots, and welcome to them,” said the crow. They smacked their lips as they approached the magpie’s nest. “I’ll find out what she’s got,” said the crow. “If it’s a grain of corn, I’ll eat it. If it’s a carrot, I’ll throw it down to you.”

  So the crow flew to the edge of the magpie’s nest while the rabbit waited below. The magpie happily showed the crow what she had found in the gutter. “It’s a fourteen-carat diamond set in a golden ring,” she said. “I wanted rings from the time I could fly, but my parents were worm collectors. If I had had my way, I’d be a wealthy bird today, surrounded by rings and other lovely things.”

  “You are living in the pluperfect subjunctive,” said the crow disdainfully.

  “It’s serene there, and never crowded, except for old regrets,” the magpie said.

  The crow dropped down to the ground and explained to the rabbit that the “carrots” the magpie had talked about were only carats. “One carrot is worth fourteen carats,” the rabbit said. “You can multiply that by twenty and it will still be true.”

  “If I can’t eat it, I don’t want it,” said the crow. “Seeing is deceiving. It’s eating that’s believing.” And the crow and the rabbit swallowed their disappointment, for want of anything else, and left the magpie to the enjoyment of her treasure. The light made everything that sparkles sparkle, and everything that glitters glitter, and the magpie was content until the setting of the sun.

  MORAL: Chacun à son gout* is very very true, but why should we despise the apples of other eyes?

  The Cricket and the Wren

  AT A MUSIC festival one summer in Tangletale Wood, a score of soloists came together to compete for the annual Peacock Awards. The Cricket was asked to pick the winner because of his fame as a fiddler and his many appearances on radio, where he is employed to let audiences know when it is night.

  The Cricket was met at the station by the Wren, who flew him to an inn, bought him a drink, carried his bags upstairs to his room, and was in general so courteous and attentive that the Cricket thought he was the proprietor of the inn.

  “I am not a proprietor, but a competitor,” the Wren said. “It is a greater honor to be judged by you, even if I should lose, than to win the highest award from a lesser critic and cricket. As small tokens of my esteem, here are a bottle of wine and a cherry pie, and the key to the boudoir of as charming a lady cricket as you would attract in a year of chirping.”

  That afternoon, the Wren flew the Cricket out to the concert field, where he heard the Frog scrape his cello, the Lark blow his clarion trumpet, the Nightingale strum his lyre of gold, the Blackbird play his boxwood flute, the Catbird run his bright piano arpeggios, and the Partridge show off on his drums. The vocalists came next, beginning with the Canary, a temperamental visitor from abroad, who had sat up all night bragging of his ability and was, as a consequence, in lousy voice. “The Owl can do better than that even if all he can sing is ‘Who,’” said the Wren, who had slipped quietly into a chair next to the Cricket’s. He gave the critic a cigar, a light, and a swig from a flask. “I shall sing a group of Lieder,” said the Wren, “all of them Henley’s ‘Take, Dear, This Little Sheaf of Songs.’ I composed the music myself, and dedicated it to my mate and to you.”

  The Mockingbird sang next, and those in the audience who hoped the amiable Wren would win with his bright little group of songs, all of them the same song, began to worry, for the Mockingbird had slept all night, dreaming of victory, and as a consequence, was in heavenly voice. “I should say his tongue is sharp rather than sweet,” whispered the Wren. “When I told him last night that you were a finer fiddler than all the finest fiddlers in the field, he remarked that, to him, you looked like a limousine come to grief at an intersection.”

  The Cricket rubbed his legs together angrily, producing two low, ominous notes. “In my opinion,” the Wren went on, “you look like a shining piece of mechanism, handsome and authoritative, such as the trigger action of a Colt. Here is a lozenge for your cough, and a pillow for your chair, and a footstool for your feet.”

  When it came time for the Wren to sing, his group of songs, all of them the same song, delighted everybody in the audience except the other soloists and their friends and families.

  “I could do better than that,” sneered the Mockingbird, “with my beak closed.”

  “I have thrashed singers with voices ten times better than that,” said the Brown Thrasher.

  “Gott im Himmel!” cried the Canary. “Er klingt wie ein rostiges eisernes Tor das geölt werden muss.”*

  In awarding first prize to the Wren, the Cricket said, in part and in parting, “His voice is like some bright piece of mechanism, such as the works of a golden music box, and he gives his group of one song an infinite variety. This artist also has a keen appreciation of values and a fine critical perception.”

  In departing, or, to be precise, escaping from, the music festival, the Cricket was fortunate enough to have at his disposal a private airplane, none other than the victorious Wren himself.

  MORAL: It is not always more blessed to give than to receive, but it is frequently more rewarding.

  The Crow and the Scarecrow

  ONCE UPON A farm an armada of crows descended like the wolf on the fold. They were after the seeds in the garden and the corn in the field. The crows posted sentinels, who warned them of the approach of the farmer, and they even had an undercover crow or two who mingled with the chickens in the barnyard and the pigeons on the roof, and found out the farmer’s plans in advance. Thus they were able to raid the garden and the field when he was away, and they stayed hidden when he was at home. The farmer decided to build a scarecrow so terrifying it would scare the hateful crows to death when they got a good look at it. But the scarecrow, for all the work the farmer put in on it, didn’t frighten even the youngest and most fluttery female. The marauders knew that the scarecrow was a suit of old clothes stuffed with straw and that what it held in its wooden hand was not a rifle but only a curtain rod.

  As more and more corn and more and more seeds disappeared, the farmer became more and more eager for vengeance. One night, he made himself up to look like a scarecrow and in the dark, for it was a moonless night, his son helped him to take the place of the scarecrow. This time, however, the hand that held the gun was not made of wood and the gun was not an unloaded curtain rod, but a double-barrelled 12-gauge Winchester.

  Dawn broke that morning with a sound like a thousand tin pans falling. This was the rebel yell of the crows coming down on field and garden like Jeb Stuart’s* cavalry. Now one of the young crows who had been out all night, drinking corn instead of eating it, suddenly went into a tailspin, plunged into a bucket of red paint that was standing near the barn, and burst into flames.

  The farmer was just about to blaze away at the squadron of crows with both barrels when the one that was on fire headed straight for him. The sight of a red crow, dripping what seemed to be blood, and flaring like a Halloween torch, gave the living scarecrow such a shock that he dropped dead in one beat less than the tick of a watch (which is the way we all want to go, mutatis, it need scarcely be said, mutandis).*

  The next Sunday the parson preached a disconsolate sermon, denouncing drink, carryings on, adult delinquency, front-page marriages, golf on Sunday, adultery, careless handling of firearms, and cruelty to our feathered friends. After the sermon, the dead farmer’s wife explained to the preacher what had really happened, but he only shook his head and murmured skeptically, “Confused indeed would be the time in which the crow scares the scarecrow and becomes the scarescarecrow.”

  MORAL: All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.

  Ivory, Apes, and People

  A BAND OF ambitious apes in Africa once called upon a herd of elephants with a business proposition. “We can sell your tusks to people for a fortune in peanuts and oranges,” s
aid the leader of the apes. “Tusks are tusks to you and us, but to people they are merchandise—billiard balls and piano keys and other things that people buy and sell.” The elephants said they would think it over. “Be here tomorrow at this time and we will swing the deal,” said the leader of the apes, and the apes went away to call on some people who were hunting for merchandise in the region.

  “It’s the very best ivory,” the leader of the apes told the leader of the people. “One hundred elephants, two hundred tusks. All yours for oranges and peanuts.”

  “That’s enough ivory for a small ivory tower,” said the leader of the people, “or four hundred billiard balls and a thousand piano keys. I will cable my agent to ship your nuts and oranges, and to sell the billiard balls and piano keys. The business of business is business, and the heart of the matter is speed.”

  “We will close the deal,” said the leader of the apes.

  “Where is the merchandise now?” inquired the leader of the people.

  “It’s eating, or mating, but it will be at the appointed place at the appointed hour,” replied the chief ape. But it wasn’t. The elephants had thought it over, and reconsidered, and they forgot to show up the following day, for elephants are good at forgetting when forgetting is good. There was a great to-do in the marts of world trade when the deal fell through, and everybody, except the elephants, got into the litigation that followed: the Better Business Bureau, the Monkey Business Bureau, the Interspecies Commerce Commission, the federal courts, the National Association of Merchandisers, the African Bureau of Investigation, the International Association for the Advancement of Animals, and the American Legion. Opinions were handed down, rules were promulgated, subpoenas were issued, injunctions were granted and denied, and objections were sustained and overruled. The Patriotic League of American Women Against Subversion took an active part until it was denounced as subversive by a man who later withdrew his accusation and made a fortune on the sale of two books, I Made My Bed and I Lie in My Teeth.

  The elephants kept their ivory, and nobody got any billiard balls or piano keys, or a single nut or an orange.

  MORAL: Men of all degrees should form this prudent habit: never serve a rabbit stew before you catch the rabbit.

  Oliver and the Other Ostriches

  AN AUSTERE OSTRICH of awesome authority was lecturing younger ostriches one day on the superiority of their species to all other species. “We were known to the Romans, or, rather, the Romans were known to us,” he said. “They called us avis struthio, and we called them Romans. The Greeks called us strouthion, which means ‘truthful one,’ or, if it doesn’t, it should. We are the biggest birds, and therefore the best.”

  All his listeners cried, “Hear! Hear!” except a thoughtful one named Oliver. “We can’t fly backward like the hummingbird,” he said aloud.

  “The hummingbird is losing ground,” said the old ostrich. “We are going places, we are moving forward.”

  “Hear! Hear!” cried all the other ostriches except Oliver.

  “We lay the biggest eggs and therefore the best eggs,” continued the old lecturer.

  “The robin’s eggs are prettier,” said Oliver.

  “Robins’ eggs produce nothing but robins,” said the old ostrich. “Robins are lawn-bound worm addicts.”

  “Hear! Hear!” cried all the other ostriches except Oliver.

  “We get along on four toes, whereas Man needs ten,” the elderly instructor reminded his class.

  “But Man can fly sitting down, and we can’t fly at all,” commented Oliver.

  The old ostrich glared at him severely, first with one eye and then the other. “Man is flying too fast for a world that is round,” he said. “Soon he will catch up with himself, in a great rear-end collision, and Man will never know that what hit Man from behind was Man.”

  “Hear! Hear!” cried all the other ostriches except Oliver.

  “We can make ourselves invisible in time of peril by sticking our heads in the sand,” ranted the lecturer. “Nobody else can do that.”

  “How do we know we can’t be seen if we can’t see?” demanded Oliver.

  “Sophistry!” cried the old ostrich, and all the other ostriches except Oliver cried, “Sophistry!” not knowing what it meant.

  Just then the master and the class heard a strange alarming sound, a sound like thunder growing close and growing closer. It was not the thunder of weather, though, but the thunder of a vast herd of rogue elephants in full stampede, frightened by nothing, fleeing nowhere. The old ostrich and all the other ostriches except Oliver quickly stuck their heads in the sand. Oliver took refuge behind a large nearby rock until the storm of beasts had passed, and when he came out he beheld a sea of sand and bones and feathers—all that was left of the old teacher and his disciples. Just to be sure, however, Oliver called the roll, but there was no answer until he came to his own name. “Oliver,” he said.

  “Here! Here!” said Oliver, and that was the only sound there was on the desert except for a faint, final rumble of thunder on the horizon.

  MORAL: Thou shalt not build thy house, nor yet thy faith, upon the sand.

  The Shore and the Sea

  A SINGLE EXCITED lemming started the exodus, crying, “Fire!” and running toward the sea. He may have seen the sunrise through the trees, or waked from a fiery nightmare, or struck his head against a stone, producing stars. Whatever it was, he ran and ran, and as he ran he was joined by others, a mother lemming and her young, a nightwatchlemming on his way home to bed, and assorted revelers and early risers.

  “The world is coming to an end!” they shouted, and as the hurrying hundreds turned into thousands, the reasons for their headlong flight increased by leaps and bounds and hops and skips and jumps.

  “The Devil has come in a red chariot!” cried an elderly male. “The sun is his torch! The world is on fire!”

  “It’s a pleasure jaunt,” squeaked an elderly female.

  “A what?” she was asked.

  “A treasure hunt!” cried a wild-eyed male who had been up all night. “Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.”

  “It’s a bear!” shouted his daughter. “Go it!” And there were those among the fleeing thousands who shouted “Goats!” and “Ghosts!” until there were almost as many different alarms as there were fugitives.

  One male lemming who had lived alone for many years refused to be drawn into the stampede that swept past his cave like a flood. He saw no flames in the forest, and no devil, or bear, or goat, or ghost. He had long ago decided, since he was a serious scholar, that the caves of ocean bear no gems, but only soggy glub and great gobs of mucky gump. And so he watched the other lemmings leap into the sea and disappear beneath the waves, some crying “We are saved!” and some crying “We are lost!” The scholarly lemming shook his head sorrowfully, tore up what he had written through the years about his species, and started his studies all over again.

  MORAL: All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

  * * *

  Uncollected Fables

  * * *

  The Flaw in the Plan

  Illustrated by Laurie Rosenwald

  THE CHEETAH NOMINATED himself to lead the Uprising of the Animals, because he was the fastest of them all. “We are going to overthrow America first,” the cheetah explained, “and Americans admire speed and stand in fear and awe of it. With all due respect to Leo,” he went on, bowing to the lion, “MGM and Androcles have made him a little silly. As for Rhino,” he added, bowing to the rhinoceros, “everyone knows that a movie actress not long ago took a snapshot of him in the African jungle and nothing happened.”

  “I should like to place myself in nomination,” said the monkey. “After all, Man sprang from me, and I am not afraid to spring at him. Furthermore, the Uprising was my idea.”

  “To Man you are a comic,” said the cheetah, “who drinks milk from a bottle while riding a tricycle. Y
ou are associated with monkey business, shines, and doodle. The elephant will attack first,” continued the cheetah, who considered himself elected, “knocking down doors, upsetting buses, breaking the center of Man’s line, and then we fleet-footed cats will follow, myself, and the tiger, and the black panther, and the jaguar, and the mountain lion, and the leopard.”

  “I could divert the attention of the enemy,” said the seal, “by balancing my billiard cue and playing ‘Three Blind Mice’ on my auto horns.”

  “America’s attention is always diverted by something,” said the cheetah, “usually by the nervous suspicion that the greatest threat to America is America. Fortunately, at the moment, the enemy is interested in three absorbing things: the latest international romance, the latest Mathilda Madison movie, The Naked and the Scantily Clad, and the latest confession recantation, ‘I Lied When I Said I Lied When I Said I Lied.’”

  “It’s easy to beat the Americans on paper,” put in the monkey, “but nobody has ever beaten them on anything else.”

  “Listen,” said the cheetah, who hadn’t been listening, “and I will brief each of you on the part he must play. We will leave the slow moving animals out of this, the turtle, the porcupine, and the skunk. Then—”

  “Point of order, point of order,” objected the skunk, and he kept on objecting, but nobody listened.

  And so the animals made their plans to overthrow the rule of Man, beginning with a concerted attack on New York. The fleet-footed, quick-minded cheetah rehearsed everybody in the strategy and tactics of the Great Assault. A vote was taken to see if everybody agreed on the plan of campaign, knew what he was supposed to do, and was ready to die for dear old Jungle. All the animals finally voted in favor of the Uprising and the way it had been planned, except the owl. The other conspirators turned their heads and stared at him. “Only one thing stands in the way of our success,” said the owl.