The Elephant and Fox.A FABLE.
I amsorry to say, that a great many people listen with more pleasure to a lively tale that is full of cunning, wit, and scandal, than to a wise discourse, which teaches truth and inculcates virtue. This may be illustrated by the fable of the elephant and fox.
These two animals fell into a dispute, as to which had the greatest powers of persuasion; and, as they could not settle the matter themselves, it was agreed to call an assembly of the beasts, and let them decide it. These were accordingly summoned, and when the tiger, porcupine, dog, ox, panther, goat, and the rest of the quadruped family had all taken their places, the elephant began his oration. He discoursed very eloquently, upon the beauty of truth, justice, and mercy, and set forth the enormity of falsehood, cunning, selfishness, and cruelty. A few of the wiser beasts listened with interest and approbation; but the leopard, tiger, porcupine, and a large majority of the audience, yawned, and showed that they thought it a very stupid piece of business.
But when the fox began to tell his cunning knaveries, they pricked up their ears, and listened with a lively interest. As he went on to relate his various adventures, how he had robbed hen-roosts, and plundered geese and ducks from the poultry-yard, and how by various cunning artifices he had escaped detection, they manifested the greatest delight. So the fox went on sneering at the elephant and all others who loved justice,truth, and mercy, and recommending to his listeners to follow the pleasures of thievery and plunder. As he closed his discourse, there was a loud burst of applause, and on counting noses, the majority was found to be in favor of the fox.
Horse
The assembly broke up, and some months passed away, when, as the elephant was quietly browsing in the woods one day, he heard a piteous moan at a little distance. Proceeding to the place from which the sound came, he there found the orator fox, caught in a trap, with both his hinder legs broken, and sadly mangled. “So,” said the fox sharply, though he was nearly exhausted with pain, “you have come to jeer at me, in my hour of trouble.” “Surely not,” said the elephant. “I would relieve your pain if I could, but your legs are broken, and there is no relief for you, but in death.” “True,” said the fox, mournfully, “and I now admit the miserable folly of those principles which I have avowed, and the practice which resulted from them. I have lived a gay life, though even my gayety has been sadly shadowed, by perpetual fear of what has now come upon me. Had I been satisfied with an honest life and innocent pleasures, I had not thus come to a miserable end. Knavery, artifice, and cunning may be very good topics with which to delude those who are inclined to be vicious, but they furnish miserable rules to live and die by.”—Parley’s Gift.