“I think, after all,” said the Camel, as he crowded himself in, “that there will not be room here for us both. You are the smaller; it will be best for you to stand outside. There will be room then for me.” So he pushed a little, and the Arab with all haste went outside the tent. THE FOX WHO HAD LOST HIS TAIL A FOX was once caught in a trap by his tail. He succeeded in getting away, but was forced to leave his “brush” behind. He soon realized that his life would be a burden, from the shame and ridicule to which his tailless condition would expose him. “I must not own that it is a misfortune not to have a bushy tail,” he said to himself. So he set about to induce all the other Foxes to part with theirs. At the next assembly he boldly made a speech, in which he set forth the advantages of his present state. “The tail,” he said, “is no real part of our persons, and besides being very ugly to see, it exposes us to danger from the dogs. I have never moved about with such ease as since I gave up my own.” When he had ended his speech, a sly old Fox arose, and giving his own brush a graceful wave, said, with the kind of sneer which all Foxes know so well how to give, that if he had lost by accident his own tail, he should, without doubt, agree with his friend; but that, as the brush was a fox’s chief ornament and distinction, until such a mishap should occur as had befallen his friend, he should retain his own and should advise the others to do the same. And the vote to retain the tails was given by a wave of the brush. Yet many fashions have been set by Foxes who have met with some such accident. THE BOYS AND THE FROGS SOME Boys, playing near a pond, saw a number of Frogs sporting in the water. “Let us see if we can hit them; it is great fun to make them dive,” said one; and they all began to pelt them with stones. At last, after several Frogs had been hit, one of them put his head up out of the water, and said: “Pray stop, Boys. Throwing stones at us may be great sport for you, but it is death to us. We have done you no harm, and alas! you have already killed or wounded three of our family.” THE SWALLOW AND THE OTHER BIRDS A WISE Swallow, seeing a man sow seed in a field, went behind him and picked up one of the seeds to see what it was. She found that it was flax. “When this flax has grown,” she said to herself, “the man will make it into linen thread and use it to make nets for catching us Birds.” So she went to all the Birds and told them what she had discovered, begging them to come and help her eat up the flaxseed before it should sprout. “This field,” she said, “is as much ours as it is his. And while one of us can do but little, all working together can quickly remove our danger.” But the Birds would not listen to her. Not one of them could she persuade to help her pick up the seeds which the farmer had sown.