THE
FOX AND THE CROW
A
crow, perched in a tree with a piece of cheese in his beak, attracted
the eye and nose of a fox. “If you can sing as prettily as you
sit,” said the fox, “then you are the prettiest singer within my
scent and sight.” The fox had read somewhere, and somewhere, and
somewhere else, that praising the voice of the crow with a cheese in
his beak would make him drop the cheese and sing. But this is not
what happened to this particular crow in this particular case.
“They
say you are sly and they say you are crazy,” said the crow, having
carefully removed the cheese from his beak with the claws of one
foot, “but you must be nearsighted as well.” Warblers wear gay
hats and colored jackets and bright vest, and they are a dollar a
hundred. I wear black and I am unique.
“I
am sure you are,” said the fox, who was neither crazy nor
nearsighted, but sly. “I recognize you, now that I look more
closely, as the most famed and talented of all birds, and I fain
would hear you tell about yourself, but I am hungry and must go.”
“Tarry
a while,” said the crow quickly, “and share my lunch with me.”
Whereupon he tossed the cunning fox the lion’s share of the cheese,
and began to tell about himself. “A ship that sails without a
crow’s nest sails to doom,” he said. “Bars may come and bars
may go, but crow bars last forever. I am the pioneer of flight, I am
the map maker. Last, but never least, my flight is known to
scientists and engineers, geometricians, and scholar, as the shortest
distance between two points. “Any two points,” he concluded
arrogantly.
“Oh,
every two points, I am sure,” said the fox. “And thank you for
the lion’s share of what I know you could not spare.” And with
this he trotted away into the woods, his appetite appeased, leaving
the hungry crow perched forlornly in the tree
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar