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New Lights on Old Paths

Chapter 37: GRAND RELATIONS.
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About This Book

A collection of short fables and parables that recast traditional moral teachings in plain, domestic and rural scenes. Each brief piece uses human and animal vignettes, everyday objects, and simple allegory to illustrate virtues such as honesty, industry, humility, and prudence, and to show practical consequences of vice. The contributions range from gentle anecdotes to pointed moral lessons and are paired with many original illustrations intended to reinforce the themes and aid reader engagement.

GRAND RELATIONS.

A  BLACKBIRD that wanted to impress on his neighbor the wren a proper sense of his great importance took occasion every now and then to remark that he was related to still larger birds.

“My cousin the crow,” he would say, “did so and so,” or “invited me to his nest at such a time.”

After hearing this over and over again, the wren answered one day,

“When I used to look at you alone and by yourself, you appeared as a very large bird in my eyes; but since I’ve got to contrasting you with the crow, you seem to have grown smaller even than myself.”


Better be satisfied with our own significance than seek to array ourselves in the consequence of other people.