Page:Little fabulist, or, Select fables.pdf/12

(12) lesson, how dangerous it is too hastily to give way to the blind impulse of a sudden passion.

The Owl and the Eagle.

N Owl sat blinking in the trunk of an hollow tree, and arraigned the brightness of the Sun. What is the use of its beams, said she, but to dazzle one's eyes so that one cannot see a Mouse? For my part, I am at a loss to conceive for what purpose so glaring an object was created. We had certainly been much better without it. O fool! replied an Eagle, perched on a branch of the same tree, to rail at excellence which thou canst not taste; ignorant that the fault is not in the Sun but in thyself. All, 'tis true, have not faculties to understand, nor powers to enjoy the benefit of it: but must the business and the pleasures of the world be obstructed, that an Owl may catch Mice?

The Blind Man and the Lame.

IS from our wants and infirmities that almost all the connections of society take their rise.