“Mice and such small deer” are characteristic figures in fables, where we usually find animals moved by human motives and speaking and acting like human beings. The longevity of such stories appears when we trace _The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse_ back to the _Satires_ of Horace, and _Chanticleer_ to the _Nun’s Priest’s Tale_ in Chaucer. The moral of the fable is simple and obvious, some bit of indisputable folk wisdom. The style of the typical fable is equally direct and simple. Æsop gives you no setting, no description, and no elaborate characterizations; his stories have survived because of their unmistakable agreement with human experience. Stevenson’s _The Frog and the Tadpole_ consists of nothing more than translating familiar human relationships and words into parallel ones for animals. The term “parable” has often been limited to those in the New Testament, but the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ says that there is no clear line of demarcation between the fable and the parable except that supernaturally gifted animals are usually confined to the former. The parable is longer than the fable, uses familiar objects and events in a normal way, and may teach a more elaborate lesson. In _A Parable for Philanthropists_, for example, you will observe that the cat, though important, is in no way supernatural, and does not contribute to the conversation. The situation is very simple and familiar, and drives home the moderate moral, “You may waste your time and do more harm than good if you insist upon trying to help those whose circumstances you do not understand.”