y material from the
Hindoos, that book must be the one made by
Joseph Jacobs. With well-chosen tales, with the
slight changes here and there necessary for use
with children, with just enough scholarship
packed out of the way in the introduction and
notes, the book has no rival.

PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL

In a certain village there lived ten cloth merchants, who always went
about together. Once upon a time they had traveled far afield, and were
returning home with a great deal of money which they had obtained by
selling their wares. Now there happened to be a dense forest near their
village, and this they reached early one morning. In it there lived
three notorious robbers, of whose existence the traders had never heard,
and while they were still in the middle of it the robbers stood before
them, with swords and cudgels in their hands, and ordered them to lay
down all they had. The traders had no weapons with them, and so, though
they were many more in number, they had to submit themselves to the
robbers, who took away everything from them, even the very clothes they
wore, and gave to each only a small loin-cloth a span in breadth and a
cubit in length.

The idea that they had conquered ten men and plundered all their
property now took possession of the robbers' minds. They seated
themselves like three monarchs before the men they had plundered, and
ordered them to dance to them before returning home. The merchants now
mourned their fate. They had lost all they had, except their loin-cloth,
and still the robbers were not satisfied, but ordered them to dance.

There was among the ten merchants one who was very clever. He pondered
over the calamity that had come upon him and his friends, the dance they
would have to perform, and the magnificent manner in which the three
robbers had seated themselves on the grass. At the same time he observed
that these last had placed their weapons on the ground, in the assurance
of having thoroughly cowed the traders, who were now commencing to
dance; and, as a song is always sung by the leader on such occasions, to
which the rest keep time with hands and feet, he thus began to sing:

"We are enty men,
They are erith men:
If each erith man,
Surround eno men
Eno man remains.

_Ta, tai tom, tadingana._"

The robbers were all uneducated, and thought that the leader was merely
singin