THE SEASIDE TRAVELLERS.
Some travellers, journeying along the sea-shore, climbed to the summit of a tall cliff, and from thence looking over the sea, saw in the distance what they thought was a large ship, and waited in the hope of seeing it enter the harbour. But as the object on which they looked was driven by the wind nearer to the shore, they found that it could at the most be a small boat, and not a ship. When however it reached the beach, they discovered that it was only a large fagot of sticks, and one of them said to his companions, "We have waited for no purpose, for after all there is nothing to see but a fagot."
Our mere anticipations of life outrun its realities.
THE ASS AND HIS SHADOW.
A Traveller hired an Ass to convey him to a distant place. The day being intensely hot, and the sun shining in its strength, the traveller stopped to rest, and sought shelter from the heat under the Shadow of the Ass. As this afforded only protection for one, and as the traveller and the owner of the Ass both claimed it, a violent dispute arose between them as to which of them had the right to it. The owner maintained that he had let the Ass only, and not his Shadow. The traveller asserted that he had, with the hire of the Ass, hired his Shadow also. The quarrel proceeded from words to blows, and while the men fought the Ass galloped off.
In quarrelling about the shadow we often lose the substance.
