of stupidity! I always laid my eggs in the
nests of other birds."

"Then how can you expect your little ones to care for you?" says the
Turtle-dove.

The Peasant and the Horse

A Peasant was sowing oats one day. Seeing the work go on, a young
Horse began to reason about it, grumbling to himself:

"A pretty piece of work, this, for which he brings such a quantity of
oats here! And yet they are all the time saying that men are wiser
than we are. Can anything possibly be more foolish or ridiculous than
to plough up a whole field like this in order to scatter one's oats
over it afterward to no purpose. Had he given them to me, or to the
bay there, or had he even thought fit to fling them to the fowls, it
would have been more like business. Or even if he had hoarded them up,
I should have recognized avarice in that. But to fling them uselessly
away--why, that is sheer stupidity!"

Meanwhile time passed; and in the autumn the oats were garnered, and
the Peasant fed this very Horse upon them all the winter.

There can be no doubt, Reader, that you do not approve of the opinions
of the Horse. But from the oldest times to our own days has not man
been equally audacious in criticising the designs of a Providence of
whose means or ends he sees and knows nothing?

The Wolf and the Cat

A Wolf ran out of the forest into a village--not to pay a visit, but to
save its life; for it trembled for its skin.

The huntsmen and a pack of hounds were after it. It would fain have
rushed in through the first gateway; but there was this unfortunate
circumstance against the scheme that all the gateways were closed.

The Wolf sees a Cat on a partition fence, and says pleadingly, "Vaska,
my friend, tell me quickly, which of the moujiks here is the kindest,
so that I may hide myself from my evil foes? Listen to the cry of the
dogs and the terrible sound of the horns? All that noise is actually
made in chase of me!"

"Go quickly, and ask Stefan," says Vaska, the Cat; "he is a very kind
man."

"Quite true; only I have torn the skin off one of his sheep."

"Well, then, you can try Demian."

"I'm afraid he's angry with me, too; I carried off one of his kids."

"Run over there, then; Trofim lives there."

"Trofim! I should be afraid of even meeting him. Ever since the
spring he has been threatening me about a lamb."

"Dear me, that's bad! But perhaps Klim will protect you."

"Oh, Vaska, I have killed one of h