Page:An argosy of fables.djvu/482

 412 "Where I am sitting isn't so far below you, is it, friend Eagle?"

The Eagle glanced upward. True enough, the Spider was busily spinning its web from a twig above his head.

"However did you reach this height?" asked the Eagle. "Weak and wingless, as you are, how did you ever crawl way up here?"

"Why, I fastened myself unto you," returned the Spider. "You yourself brought me from down below clinging to your tail feathers. But now that I am so high up in the world I can get along very well by myself, without your help. So you needn't put on any airs with me. For I want to tell you that—"

At this moment a sudden gust of wind swept by, and brushed the Spider, web and all, back again into the depths of the valley from which it had come.

(Krilov, Fables. Adapted from the translation by William R. S. Ralston.)

THE MONKEY AND THE SPECTACLES

MONKEY, which had grown weak-sighted in old age, remembered having heard men say that this was not a serious misfortune, but only made it necessary to wear glasses. So the Monkey provided himself with half a dozen pairs of Spectacles, and after turning them this way and that, tried wearing them first on the top of his head, and then on the end of his tail, smelled of them and licked them, but all to no purpose. The Spectacles did not help him to see any better. "Good gracious," cried the Monkey, "what fools people are to listen to all the nonsense that they hear. All that I have been told about Spectacles is a pack of lies. They are not a particle of