To "cast sheep's eyes" on one is to snatch a hasty glance, looking askance with sheep-like timidity on some fair object whose regard has not been won or as yet appealed to. The idea that "One black sheep infects the flock and poisons all the rest" has, we need scarcely say, no warrant in actual fact, though, morally, a black sheep is a dangerous addition to any flock, a something to be promptly eliminated from regiment, workshop, school, or whatever other body he may be infecting or exposing to risk of contagion. A much more attractive adage is the well-known declaration, "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." The French say, "À brebis tondue Dieu mesure le vent," and the English proverb, as we find Herbert using it in 1640, is a repetition of this--"To a close-shorn sheep God gives wind by measure." This shearing process suggested eighteen hundred years ago, or possibly long before this,[174:A] the proverb, "Boni pastoris est tondere pecus, non deglubere"--"It is the duty of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them." This note of warning is repeated in the reminder that "The orange that is too hard squeezed yields a bitter juice," both proverbs teaching moderation. It is a pleasant little saying that "He who has one sheep in the flock will like all the rest the better for it." In these happy islands the fear of the wolf has long been extinct, but in other lands the sheep and the wolf are often bracketted together in their proverbs; thus in France one is warned against a too self-effacing humility in this world in the words, "He that maketh himself a sheep shall be eaten of the wolf"; while another lesson of worldly prudence is taught in the Italian proverb, "It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf his confessor." The Spaniard says, "Oveja que bala bocada pierde"--"The sheep loses a mouthful when it bleats," a proverb which seems to encourage mere greediness at the expense of social converse, but which we may take more favourably to imply that it is better to stick steadily to one's work than break off for useless interruptions and, possibly, querulous complaints.