"It is this way," said the intended purchaser, "I will take your horses now, and whenever I find use for one, I will send you the money for it."
"Now the gods be lenient to folly!" exclaimed the indignant merchant. "Man, Man! where in the realm of idiocy did you get your knowledge of business?"
"I ran a pay-on-publication journal for ten years," said the fool with asperity.
But the merchant had vanished in a cloud of oaths and dust.
[Illustration: The Merchant and the Fool.]
A wolf that had been left for dead by the dogs lay not far from a running brook. He felt that one good drink might save his life. Just then a sheep passed near.
"Pray, sister," said he very gently, but with a sinister twinkle of his eye teeth, "bring me some water from yon stream."
"Certainly," said the sheep, and she brought him a glass in which she had poured a few knock-out drops. As she sat on his corpse a little later she moralized in this manner: "Some clever people are wicked, but all wicked people are not clever by a d----d sight."
A hippopotamus who had dwelt contentedly for years on the banks of a reedy stream, looked up one day and saw an eagle.
She became immediately fired with a desire to fly. Having lived a staid and respectable life that could not but find favor in the eyes of the gods, she raised her voice in prayer.
Jove smiled a little, but granted her request.
On the instant a pair of broad, powerful wings were affixed to her shoulders.
She was naturally a trifle nervous about trying them at first, but finally mustered up her courage.
Away she swooped, and with a pardonable vanity took her course over a piece of jungle where some old friends lived.
Precisely thirty-eight seconds later a convention of animals, all swearing and trembling with fright, were trying to conceal themselves in the same three-by-four hole in the ground.
The effect on the other animals disconcerted the good-natured hippopotamus to such an extent that she lost control of herself and sailed through the forest like an avalanche on a bender. Down went the trees and crack went the branches, while horror-stricken beasts with bristling hair split the welkin with their shrieks.
The hippopotamus made for home at her best speed. Arriving over the familiar spot, she let go all holds and came down ker-splash in the mud, knocking the astonished little hippopotamuses out into mid-stream.