The wolf is often introduced in proverb-wisdom, but he is, as his nature is, always a cruel, cheerless beast, quite wanting in the debonair attractiveness of the fox--who is as big a rascal really as he is. "To put one's head into the wolf's mouth" is to needlessly court great risks. The proverb is based on the old fable of the crane putting its head down the wolf's throat to extract a bone that had stuck there. The operation was entirely successful, and, on asking for his reward, the wolf told him that it was reward sufficient to have safely withdrawn his head. "To keep the wolf from the door" is to keep starvation at bay, and "To eat like a wolf" is to eat ravenously. The Italians say that "Who keeps company with the wolf will learn to howl." Deliberate association with evil characters will make one as bad as those they associate with.[182:B] "Though the wolf may lose his teeth he does not lose his inclinations"--he is at heart as wolfish as ever. The Persians give the caution: "Keep the dogs near when thou suppest with the wolf," while the Romans had a saying, "Auribus lupum teneo." This having the wolf by the ears is a most dangerous position to be in, for the furious creature is so difficult to hold, and yet one dare not let go on any consideration. Thus do unfortunates at times get entangled in some bad business--the beginnings of a lawsuit, or the like--where advance or retreat seem equally alarming. The "Wolf in sheep's clothing" is a still more objectionable beast than the wolf _in propria personâ_, since he thereby adds treachery to all his other evil qualities: "And by these guileful means he more prevail'd Than had he open enmity profest. The wolf more safely wounds when in sheep's clothing drest." The bear has not so distinctive an individuality in fabledom as the fox or wolf. The best proverb that we have met with in which he figures is the declaration that "A man without restraint is a bear without a ring;" and then there is, of course, the well-known caution to the over-sanguine, "Sell not the bear's skin before you have caught him," or, as it is also phrased, "Spending your Michaelmas rent at Midsummer noon," not consider what may arise to mock your present confidence. In our list of wild beasts it is a considerable drop from the wolf and bear to the mouse; but the mouse claims his place on our list, and is a much better known wild beast in England than the wolf, and therefore more in evidence in our proverbs. "The mouse that hath but one hole is easily caught," says an old adage, and we meet with it again in Chaucer's "Wife of Bath," in the couplet, "The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole Can never be a mouse of any soul"; or, at all events, of any great enterprise.