If men were but generally as prudent as Foxes, they would not suffer so many silly fashions to obtain as are daily brought in vogue, for which scarce any reason can be assigned besides the humour of some conceited vain creature; unless, which is full as bad, they are intended to palliate some defect in the person that introduces them. The petticoat of a whole sex has been sometimes swelled to such a prodigious extent, to screen an enormity of which only one of them has been guilty. And it is no wonder that Alexander the Great could bring a wry-neck into fashion, in a nation of slaves, when we consider what power of this nature some little, insignificant, dapper fellows have had among a free people. FABLE LXVII. [Illustration: THE FOX AND THE CROW.] A Crow having taken a piece of cheese out of a cottage window, flew up into a high tree with it, in order to eat it; which a Fox observing, came and sat underneath, and began to compliment the Crow upon the subject of her beauty. 'I protest,' says he, 'I never observed it before, but your feathers are of a more delicate white than any that ever I saw in my life! Ah; what a fine shape and graceful turn of body is there! And I make no question but you have a tolerable voice. If it is but as fine as your complexion, I do not know a bird that can pretend to stand in competition with you.' The Crow, tickled with this very civil language, nestled and riggled about, and hardly knew where she was; but thinking the Fox a little dubious as to the particular of her voice, and having a mind to set him right in that matter, began to sing, and in the same instant let the cheese drop out of her mouth. This being what the Fox wanted, he chopped it up in a moment, and trotted away, laughing to himself at the easy credulity of the Crow. APPLICATION.