[Illustration: THE WOLF, THE FOX, AND THE APE (See page 153)] Æsop’s Fables A Version for Young Readers _By_ J. H. Stickney Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull Ginn and Company Boston—New York—Chicago—London Atlanta—Dallas—Columbus—San Francisco [Illustration] COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY GINN AND COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 321.11 THE Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY·PROPRIETORS·BOSTON·U.S.A. PREFACE THE good fortune which has attended the earlier edition of this book is a proof that there is less occasion now than formerly to plead the cause of fables for use in elementary schools. And yet their value is still too little recognized. The homely wisdom, which the fables represent so aptly, was a more common possession of intelligent people of a generation or two ago than it is at the present time. It had then a better chance of being passed on by natural tradition than is now the case among the less homogeneous parentage of our school children. And there has never been a greater need than now for the kind of seed-sowing for character that is afforded by this means. As in the troubled times in Greece in Æsop’s day, twenty-five centuries ago, moral teaching to be salutary must be largely shorn of didactic implications and veiled with wit and satire. This insures its most vital working wherever its teaching is pertinent. To be whipped, warned, shamed, or encouraged, and so corrected, over the heads of animals as they are represented in the expression of their native traits, is the least offensive way that can fall to a person’s lot. Among several hundred episodes, knowledge of which is acquired in childhood as a part of an educational routine, most conservative estimates would allow for large, substantial results in practical wit and wisdom, to be reaped as later life calls for them. It is well recognized by scholars, and should be taught to children, that not all the fables attributed to Æsop are of so early a date. Imitations of his genius all along the centuries have masqueraded under his name. Facts about him appear in the Introduction.