t I will save the best, and be content to-day
with the bow-string." But when he seized the string it loosened the
fixed arrow, which shot him through the heart.

The greedy man and the miser cannot enjoy their gains.

The Astronomer.

An Astronomer used to walk out every night to gaze upon the stars. It
happened one night that, with his whole thoughts rapt up in the skies,
he fell into a well. One who heard his cries ran up to him, and said:
"While you are trying to pry into the mysteries of heaven, you overlook
the common objects under your feet."

We should never look so high as to miss seeing the things that are
around us.

The Bulls and the Frogs.

[Illustration]

Two Bulls lived in the same herd, and each aspiring to be the leader and
master, they finally engaged in a fierce battle. An old Frog, who sat on
the bank of a stream near by, began to groan and to quake with fear. A
thoughtless young Frog said to the old one: "Why need you be afraid?
What is it to you that the Bulls fight for supremacy?" "Do you not see,"
said the old Frog, "that one must defeat the other, and that the
defeated Bull, being driven from the field, will be forced to stay in
the marshes, and will thus trample us to death?"

The poor and weak are often made to suffer for the follies of the
great.

The Thief and His Mother.

[Illustration]

A Schoolboy stole a horn-book from one of his schoolfellows, and brought
it home to his mother. Instead of chastising him, she rather encouraged
him in the deed. In course of time the boy, now grown into a man, began
to steal things of greater value, until, at last, being caught in the
very act, he was brought to the Judge and sentenced to be hung. As he
was being led to the scaffold, the mother bowed herself to the ground
with grief. A neighbor seeing her thus, said to her: "It is too late for
you to moan and sob now. If you had been as much grieved when he
committed his first theft, you would have corrected him in time, and
thus have saved yourself this sorrowful day."

Nip evil in the bud.

The Man and His Two Wives.

In days when a man was allowed more wives than one, a middle-aged
bachelor, who could be called neither young nor old, and whose hair was
only just beginning to turn gray, must needs fall in love with two women
at once, and marry them both. The one was young and blooming, and wished
her husband to appear as youthful as herself; the other was