s palace as if I had been a
girl. What shall I now do to you?" With these words he stretched out his
hands toward a thorn-tree, meaning to cut a stick from its branches that
he might beat the lion, when one of its sharp prickles pierced his
finger, and caused great pain and inflammation, so that the young Prince
fell down in a fainting fit. A violent fever suddenly set in, from which
he died not many days after.

We had better bear our troubles bravely than try to escape them.

The Trees and the Axe.

[Illustration]

A Man came into a forest, and made a petition to the Trees to provide
him a handle for his axe. The Trees consented to his request, and gave
him a young ash-tree. No sooner had the man fitted from it a new handle
to his axe, than he began to use it, and quickly felled with his strokes
the noblest giants of the forest. An old oak, lamenting when too late
the destruction of his companions, said to a neighboring cedar: "The
first step has lost us all. If we had not given up the rights of the
ash, we might yet have retained our own privileges and have stood for
ages."

In yielding the rights of others, we may endanger our own.

The Seaside Travelers.

Some travelers, journeying along the sea-shore, climbed to the summit of
a tall cliff, and from thence looking over the sea, saw in the distance
what they thought was a large ship, and waited in the hope of seeing it
enter the harbor. But as the object on which they looked was driven by
the wind nearer to the shore, they found that it could at the most be a
small boat, and not a ship. When, however, it reached the beach, they
discovered that it was only a large fagot of sticks, and one of them
said to his companions: "We have waited for no purpose, for after all
there is nothing to see but a fagot."

Our mere anticipations of life outrun its realities.

The Sea-gull and the Kite.

[Illustration]

A Sea-gull, who was more at home swimming on the sea than walking on the
land, was in the habit of catching live fish for its food. One day,
having bolted down too large a fish, it burst its deep gullet-bag, and
lay down on the shore to die. A Kite, seeing him, and thinking him a
land bird like itself, exclaimed: "You richly deserve your fate; for a
bird of the air has no business to seek its food from the sea."

Every man should be content to mind his own business.

The Monkey and the Camel.

[Illustration]

The beasts