THE COCK AND THE JEWEL.

A Cock, in scratching upon a dunghill, found a Jewel; what a prize, says he to himself, would this have been to a lapidary, but as to any value it is to me, a barleycorn would have been worth forty of it.

REFLECTION.

This fable may be considered as holding forth an emblem of industry and moderation. The Cock lives by his honest labour, and maintains his family out of it:

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his scratching upon the dunghill is but working in his calling: the precious Jewel is only a gaudy temptation that fortune throws in his way to divert him from his business and his duty; he would have been glad, he says, of a barley-corn instead of it, and so casts it aside as a thing not worth the heeding. What is this, but forming a true estimate upon the matter in question, in preferring that which providence has made and pronounced to be the staff of life, before a glittering gew-gaw, that has no other value than what vanity, pride, and luxury have set upon it? The price of the market to a jeweller in his trade, is one thing, but the intrinsic worth of a thing to a man of sense and judgment, is another. Nay, that very lapidary himself, with a craving stomach, and in the Cock's place, would have made the Cock's choice. The doctrine, in short, may be this: that we are to prefer things necessary before things superfluous; the comforts and the blessings of providence before the dazzling and the splendid curiosities of mode and imagination: and finally, that we are not to govern our lives by fancy, but by reason.

A CROW, having taken a piece of cheese out of a cottage window, flew up into a high tree with it, in order to eat it; which a Fox observing, came and sat underneath, and began to compliment the Crow upon the subject of her beauty. "I protest," says he, "I never observed it before, but your feathers are of a more delicate white than any that ever I saw in my life! Ah! what a fine shape and graceful turn of body is there! And I make no question but you have a tolerable voice. If it is but as fine as your complexion, I do not know a bird that can pretend to stand in competition with you." The Crow, tickled with this very civil language, nestled and riggled about, and hardly knew where she was; but thinking the Fox a little dubious as to the particular of her voice, and having a mind to set him right in that matter, began to sing, and in the same instant let the

cheese drop out of her mouth. This being what the Fox wanted, he chopped it up in a moment, and trotted away, laughing to himself at the easy credulity of the Crow.

REFLECTION.

There is hardly any man living that may not be wrought upon more or less by flattery; for we do all of us naturally overween in our own favour. But when it comes to be applied once to a vain person, there is no end then can be proposed to be attained by it, but may be effected.