"How do you feel to-day, friend Lion?" he asked, taking care to stand at a safe distance from the den. "I am very ill," answered the Lion. "Won't you come inside a little while? It does me a great deal of good to see my kind friends." "Thank you," said the Fox; "but I notice that all the tracks point toward your den and none point away from it," and so saying, he trotted merrily away. The Travellers and the Bear Two Men, about to journey through a forest, agreed to stand by each other in any dangers that might befall. They had not gone far before a savage Bear rushed out from a thicket and stood in their path. One of the Travellers, a light, nimble fellow, climbed up into a tree. The other fell flat on his face and held his breath. The Bear came up and smelled at him, and, taking him for dead, went off again into the wood. The man in the tree then came down, and, rejoining his companion, asked him, with a mischievous smile, what was the wonderful secret that the Bear had whispered into his ear, "Why," replied the other sulkily, "he told me to take care for the future and not to put any confidence in such cowardly rascals as you are!" The Fox Without a Tail A Fox was once caught in a trap by his tail, and in order to get away was forced to leave it behind him. Knowing that without a tail he would be a laughing-stock for all his fellows, he resolved to try to induce them to part with theirs. At the next assembly of Foxes, therefore, he made a speech on the unprofitableness of tails in general, and the inconvenience of a Fox's tail in particular, adding that he had never felt so easy as since he had given up his own. When he had sat down, a sly old fellow rose, and waving his long brush with a graceful air, said, with a sneer, that if, like the last speaker, he had been so unfortunate as to lose his tail, nothing further would have been needed to convince him; but till such an accident should happen, he should certainly vote in favour of tails. The Crab and Its Mother One fine day two Crabs came out from their home to take a stroll on the sand. "Child," said the mother, "you are walking very ungracefully. You should accustom yourself to walking straight forward without twisting from side to side." "Pray, mother," said the young one, "do but set the example yourself, and I will follow you!" The Jackdaw with Borrowed Plumes A Jackdaw, having dressed himself in feathers which had fallen from some Peacocks, strutted about in the company of those birds and tried to pass himself off as one of them. They soon found him out, however, and pulled their plumes from him so roughly, and in other ways so battered him, that he would have been glad to rejoin his humble fellows, but they, in their turn, would have nothing to do with him, and driving him from their society, told him to remember that it is not only fine feathers that make fine birds. The Farmer and His Dog