‘And pray, Mrs. Poll,’ said the eagle, ‘how comes it, since you fare so sumptuously, that you are so lean and meagre, and seem scarcely able to exert that voice you thus make your boast of?’ ‘Alas!’ replied the parrot, ‘poor Poll’s lady has kept her bed almost this week; the servants have all forgot to feed me; and I am almost starved.’ ‘Pray observe,’ said the eagle, ‘the folly of such pride! Had you been able to have conversed only with your own kind, you would have fared in common with them; but it is to this vaunted imitation of the human voice, that you owe your confinement, and consequently (though living in a golden cage) your dependence upon the will and memory of others, even for common necessary food.’ Thus reproved, the parrot, with shame, hastily retired from the assembly. Next stood forth the daw, and, having tricked himself in all the gay feathers he could muster together, on the credit of these borrowed ornaments, pleaded his beauty, as a title to the preference in dispute. Immediately the birds agreed to divest the silly counterfeit of all his borrowed plumes; and, more abashed than the parrot, he secretly slunk away. The peacock, proud of native beauty, now flew into the midst of the assembly. He displayed before the sun his gorgeous tail. ‘Observe (said he) how the vivid blue of the sapphire glitters in my neck; and when thus I spread my tail, a gemmy brightness strikes the eye from a plumage varied with a thousand glowing colours.’ At this moment, a nightingale began to chant forth his melodious lay; at which the peacock, dropping his expanded tail, cried out, ‘Ah what avails my silent unmeaning beauty, when I am so far excelled in voice by such a little russet-feathered wretch as that!’ And, by retiring, he gave up all claim to the contended-for preference. The nightingale was so delighted with having got the better of the peacock, that he exerted his little voice, and was so lost in the conceit of his own melody, that he did not observe a hawk, who flew upon him, and carried him off in his claws. The eagle then declared, ‘That as the peacock’s envy had taken away all his claim, so no less had the nightingale’s self-conceit frustrated all his pretensions; for those who are so wrapped up in their own perfections, as to mind nothing but themselves, are forever liable to all sorts of accidents.’ And, besides, it was plain, by the exultation the nightingale expressed on his imagined glory over the peacock, that he would have been equally dejected on any preference given to another. And now the owl, with an affected gravity, and whooting voice, pleaded his well-known wisdom; and said, ‘He doubted not but the preference would be granted to him without contest, by all the whole assembly for what was so likely to produce happiness as wisdom?’