when he saw his feet he was ashamed to own
them, they were so slim and small.

While he stood knee-deep in the water, and was thinking only of his
fine horns, a Lion saw him and came leaping out from the tall grass to
get him. The Deer would have been caught at once if he had not jumped
quickly out of the brook. He ran as fast as he could, and his feet
were so light and swift that he soon left the Lion far behind. But by
and by he had to pass through some woods, and, as he was running, his
horns were caught in some vines that grew among the trees. Before he
could get loose the Lion was upon him.

"Ah me!" cried the Deer, "the things which pleased me most will now
cause my death; while the things which I thought so mean and poor would
have carried me safe out of danger."

The Fox and the Grapes

There was a time when a Fox would have ventured as far for a Bunch of
Grapes as for a shoulder of mutton, and it was a Fox of those days and
that palate that stood gaping under a vine and licking his lips at a
most delicious Cluster of Grapes that he had spied out there.

He fetched a hundred and a hundred leaps at it, till, at last, when he
was as weary as a dog, and found that there was no good to be done:

"Hang 'em," says he, "they are as sour as crabs"; and so away he went,
turning off the disappointment with a jest.

The Farmer and the Stork

A Farmer placed nets on his newly sown plough lands, and caught a
quantity of Cranes, which came to pick up his seed. With them he
trapped a Stork also.

The Stork, having his leg fractured by the net, earnestly besought the
Farmer to spare his life. "Pray, save me, master," he said, "and let
me go free this once. My broken limb should excite your pity.
Besides, I am no Crane. I am a Stork, a bird of excellent character;
and see how I love and slave for my father and mother. Look, too, at
my feathers, they are not the least like to those of a Crane."

The Farmer laughed aloud, and said: "It may all be as you say, I only
know this, I have taken you with those robbers, the Cranes, and you
must die in their company."

The Hare and the Tortoise

The Hare, one day, laughing at the Tortoise for his slowness and
general unwieldiness, was challenged by the latter to run a race. The
Hare, looking on the whole affair as a great joke, consented, and the
Fox was selected to act as umpire and hold the stakes.

The rivals started, and the Hare, of course, soon