THE DAW AND THE JAY.
Once on a time there was a daw, who was so vain that he must needs leave his old friends (the jacks), and go quite out of his sphere to pass for a jay. So he stuck the bright plumes that fell from those gay birds on his own back, that he might look like them. But they soon found him out, took off his plumes, fell on him with their sharp bills, and made him smart for his pride. Full of shame, he hung down his head, and once more went to flock with those of his own tribe, but they knew his vain ways too well, and told him they did not now choose to own him; and one of them said, “If you had been true to your own friends, you would not have had such hard cuts from those whom you have just left, nor would you have had to bear the slights which we now feel we must put on you.”