Page:Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists.djvu/200

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THE Doctrine of This Fable is according to Reaon, and Nature. People that are not Allow'd to be Sharers with their Companions in Good Fortune, will hardly ever agree to be Sharers in Bad, An Open, and an Honet Candor of Mind carries a Body Safe and Dry through all Ways and Weathers; Whereas in hifting and huffling, a Man puts himelf off his Guard; and the ame Rule that erves him at One time, will not erve him at Another, Men are willing enough to have Partners in Los, but not in Profit; and 'tis not the Traveller alone that cries [I] have found a Pure of Gold, and then Changes his Note upon the Hue and Cry, and ays [WE] hall be Hang'd for't; but 'tis the Coure of All People of Intrigue, to give Every thing two Faces, and to Deal with the World, as the Spark did with the Oracle. The Bird hall be dead or living, which himelf Pleaes.

To Emprove the Moral yet a little farther, we have a Thouand Diappointments in the Ordinary Coure of Life to Anwer This in the Fable. Many a Man finds this Pure of Gold in a Mitre, in a Bottle, in an Office, and in All other the vain Satisfactions of This World: And what’s the End on't at lat, but when he has Compas'd his Longing, Gratify’d his Appetite, or, as he fancies, made his Fortune perhaps: He grows preently Sick of his Purchae; His Concience is the Hue and Cry That purues him, and when he reckons upon it that he has gotten a Booty, he has only caught a Tartar. The Bag of Money burnt the Poor Fellow’s Fingers in the very Taking of it up.

Here were Two Neighbour-Frogs; One of them Liv’d in a Pond, and the Other in the High-way hard-by. The Pond-Frog finding the Water begin to fail upon the Road, would fain have gotten T' other Frog over to her in the Pool; where he might have been Safe; but he was wonted to the Place, he aid, and would not Remove. And what was the End on't now, but the Wheel of a Cart drove over her a while after, and Cruh'd her to pieces?

CUSTOM is Another Nature; and what betwixt Obtinacy, and Sloth, let it be never o ill, and inconvenient, People are very Hard yet to Quit it.