Short Stories

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

"COME and dine with me to-day," said the Fox to 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!"