ble shows that being asked to dinner is not always the same
thing as being asked to dine.

XXXIII.

An old monkey, designing to teach his sons the advantage of unity,
brought them a number of sticks, and desired them to see how easily
they might be broken, one at a time. So each young monkey took a stick
and broke it.

"Now," said the father, "I will teach you a lesson."

And he began to gather the sticks into a bundle. But the young
monkeys, thinking he was about to beat them, set upon him, all
together, and disabled him.

"There!" said the aged sufferer, "behold the advantage of unity! If
you had assailed me one at a time, I would have killed every mother's
son of you!"

Moral lessons are like the merchant's goods: they are conveyed in
various ways.

XXXIV.

A wild horse meeting a domestic one, taunted him with his condition of
servitude. The tamed animal claimed that he was as free as the wind.

"If that is so," said the other, "pray tell me the office of that bit
in your mouth."

"That," was the answer, "is iron, one of the best tonics in the
_materia medica_."

"But what," said the other, "is the meaning of the rein attached to
it?"

"Keeps it from falling out of my mouth when I am too indolent to hold
it," was the reply.

"How about the saddle?"

"Fool!" was the angry retort; "its purpose is to spare me fatigue:
when I am tired, I get on and ride."

XXXV.

Some doves went to a hawk, and asked him to protect them from a kite.

"That I will," was the cheerful reply; "and when I am admitted into
the dovecote, I shall kill more of you in a day than the kite did in a
century. But of course you know this; you expect to be treated in the
regular way."

So he entered the dovecote, and began preparations for a general
slaughter. But the doves all set upon him and made exceedingly short
work of him. With his last breath he asked them why, being so
formidable, they had not killed the kite. They replied that they had
never seen any kite.

[Illustration]

XXXVI.

A defeated warrior snatched up his aged father, and, slinging him
across his shoulders, plunged into the wilderness, followed by the
weary remnant of his beaten army. The old gentleman liked it.

"See!" said he, triumphantly, to the flying legion; "did you ever hear
of so dutiful and accommodating a son? And he's as easy under the
saddle as an old family horse!"

"I rather think," replied the broken