The king went to the palace with a sad face. He told his courtiers how unsuccessful he had been, and went to his private room. The next day at two o'clock in the afternoon the shepherd returned the twelve hares. Not a single hare was changed. But the king still refused to fulfill his promise. He told the shepherd to fill a bag with all the bad words he knew. The shepherd uttered every kind of bad words; but the bag was still empty. But one thing came to his mind. He said loudly, "The princess scrubbed my kitchen yesterday afternoon." The princess jumped from her seat and said, "The bag is full." "No," said the king. "Continue." "The king," said the shepherd, "wa--wa--wash----" The king jumped from his throne and said, "That's enough," and tied the bag. The marriage was then arranged and the next day the shepherd and the princess were married. From this time on the shepherd and princess lived happily for many years. He succeeded his father-in-law as king. --Vincente M. Hilario. CHAPTER II THE SYMBOLIC-DIDACTIC GROUP We now turn to a set of stories with a new basis, the symbolic-didactic narratives: fables, parables, and allegories. By the word "symbolic" we shall understand that the stories mean something more than appears on the surface. By "didactic," the fact that the narratives are told for the purpose of teaching a lesson. The hearer no more believes in the mere literal occurrence than does the narrator himself. The meaning is the concern of both. For the time being, the story-teller has set himself up as a preacher, or the preacher as a story-teller. His object is to make vivid and dramatic a lesson in manners, morals, religion, politics, or art. I. The Fable [Æsop] The fable is a very old type of narrative, so old that critics are not sure of the place of its origin. Some think that it rose at the court of Crœsus with Æsop and spread eastward and westward. Others maintain that it came from India to the court of the Lydian king, and was adopted by Æsop, the king's state orator, as a most convenient device for impressing political lessons on a restless people in a scattered empire. Others say that there never was a man Æsop at all. But legend goes into detail to the effect that this ancient politician was once a slave and that he rose from his servile condition to be the counsellor of kings by the sheer force of his brains and an appreciation of practical problems (much as our self-made men of today have risen). Once even, when sent as a royal messenger to a rebellious and distant part of the empire, he quelled a mob and saved his own life by his ready wit in telling a story and applying the moral. He wrote nothing himself, legend goes on to admit, but he scattered his practical narratives far and wide, and they were finally collected as a distinct species of literature. [Other early fabulists]