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Some of Æsop's Fables with Modern Instances cover

Some of Æsop's Fables with Modern Instances

Chapter 43: THE HAWK CHASING THE DOVE.
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About This Book

A compact collection retells classical animal fables as short moral anecdotes, each pairing a brisk narrative—animals behaving like humans—with a pointed lesson about vanity, greed, prudence, or folly. Many entries are paired with contemporary illustrative vignettes that transpose the original incidents into modern scenes, and the translations favor plain, terse language. The volume gathers roughly twenty concise tales, each concluding with a pithy moral, and includes familiar pieces such as the fox and the crow, the stag at the water, and the dog and the wolf.

THE OX AND THE FROG.

An Ox, as he was drinking at the water's edge, crushed a young Frog underfoot. When the mother Frog came to the spot (for she happened to be away at the time) she asked his brothers where he was. "He is dead, mother," they said; "a few minutes ago a great big four-legged thing came up and crushed him dead with his hoof." Thereupon the Frog began to puff herself out and ask whether the animal was as big as that. "Stop, mother, don't put yourself about," they said; "you will burst in two long before you can make yourself the same size as that beast."



THE HAWK CHASING THE DOVE


THE HAWK CHASING THE DOVE.

A Hawk giving headlong chase to a Dove rushed after it into a farmstead, and was captured by one of the farm men. The Hawk began to coax the man to let him go, saying that he had never done him any harm. "No," rejoined the man; "nor had this Dove harmed you."



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