The Fox and the Crow
A crow, perched in a tree with a piece of cheese in
his beak, attracted the eye and nose of a fox. "If you can sing as
prettily as you sit," said the fox, "then you are the prettiest
singer within my scent and sight." The fox had read somewhere, and
somewhere, and somewhere else, that praising the voice of a crow with a cheese
in his beak would make him drop the cheese and sing. But this is not what
happened to this particular crow in this particular case.
"They say you are sly and they say you are
crazy," said the crow, having carefully removed the cheese from his beak
with the claws of one foot, "but you must be nearsighted as well. Warblers
wear gay hats and colored jackets and bright vest, and they are a dollar a hundred.
I wear black and I am unique.
"I am sure you are," said the fox, who was
neither crazy nor nearsighted, but sly. "I recognize you, now that I look
more closely, as the most famed and talented of all birds, and I fain would
hear you tell about yourself, but I am hungry and must go."
"Tarry awhile," said the crow quickly,
"and share my lunch with me." Whereupon he tossed the cunning fox the
lion's share of the cheese, and began to tell about himself. "A ship that
sails without a crow's nest sails to doom," he said. "Bars may come
and bars may go, but crow bars last forever. I am the pioneer of flight, I am
the map maker. Last, but never least, my flight is known to scientists and
engineers, geometricians, and scholar, as the shortest distance between two points.
Any two points," he concluded arrogantly.
"Oh, every two points, I am sure," said the
fox. "And thank you for the lion's share of what I know you could not
spare." And with this he trotted away into the woods, his appetite
appeased, leaving the hungry crow perched forlornly in the tree.
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