THE
FOX WHO LOST HIS TAIL
A
FOX saw a trap lying in his path, and stopped to look at it.
"How
very silly any beast must be," said he, "to allow himself to be
caught in such a thing as that!"
Then,
to show that he did not care for it, he whisked his tail into it. But the trap
was too quick for him, and his tail, of which he was so proud, was snapped off
in a moment. He was so much ashamed of himself that he ran into the woods, and
did not show himself to his friends for a long time.
At
last he thought that if the other Foxes would only lose their tails, too, he
might then be in the fashion, and look as nice as any of them. So he called
them together and made a speech to them, standing all the time with his back
against a tree.
"Good
friends," he said, "did you never think how very useless our tails
are? They are always in the way when we run through the bushes, and, I am sure,
we should be a great deal better off without them. I, for one, am in favor of
cutting them off. Let us all get rid of those useless burdens!"
"Turn
round! turn round!" cried the other Foxes. "You have already lost
your tail, or you would never give us such advice as that. All you want is to
help your own case, and not ours."
THE
FOX AND THE CRANE
"Thank
you," said the Crane; "I will do so with pleasure."
But
after the dinner she was as hungry as before. All that the Fox had offered her
was some thin soup in a shallow plate. With her long, sharp bill it was as much
as she could do to get a taste, while the Fox with his broad tongue quickly
lapped it all up.
"Come
and dine with me to-morrow," said the Crane.
"Thank
you," said the Fox; "I will do so with pleasure."
He
went in great glee, but he came home sad. The Crane had offered him plenty of
good food, but had served it in tall, narrow-necked bottles. With his broad
tongue he could not get so much as a taste, while the Crane with her long,
sharp bill easily reached and ate up the whole of it.
LEARNING
TO BE SILENT
The
pupils of the Tendai school used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of
them who were intimate friends promised one another to observe seven days of
silence.
On
the first day all were silent. Their meditation had begun auspiciously, but
when night came and the oil lamps were growing dim one of the pupils could not
help exclaiming to a servant: “Fix those lamps.”
The
second pupil was surprised to hear the first one talk. “We are not supposed to
say a word,” he remarked.
“You
two are stupid. Why did you talk?” asked the third.
“I
am the only one who has not talked,” concluded the fourth pupil.
1
DOLLAR AND 100 DOLLAR BILL
One day, a one dollar bill and a hundred dollar bill got folded together and began talking about their life experiences.
The
hundred dollar bill began to brag:
"I've
had a great life," he said. "I've been to all the big hotels, Donald
Trump himself used me at his casino, I've been in the wallets of Fortune 500
board members, I've flown from one end of the country to the other! I've even
been in the wallet of two Presidents of the United
States, and once when Princess Diana visited the US,
she used me to buy a packet of gum."
In
awe, the dollar humbly responded, "Gee, nothing like that has ever
happened to me, ...but I have been to church a lot!"
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