Short Studies on Great Subjects Part 34

'Not quite,' thought the Cat, as she trotted off; 'one good turn deserves another, that is true; and you have given me a dinner. But they have given me many at home, and I mean to take a few more of them; so I think you mustn't go round our yard.'

PART IV.

The next morning, when the Dog came down to breakfast, he found his old friend sitting in her usual place on the hearth-rug.

'Oh! so you have come back,' said he. 'How d'ye do? You don't look as if you had had a very pleasant journey.'

'I have learnt something,' said the Cat. 'Knowledge is never pleasant.'

'Then it is better to be without it,' said the Dog.

'Especially, better to be without knowing how to stand on one's hind legs, Dog,' said the Cat; 'still you see, you are proud of it; but I have learnt a great deal, Dog. They won't worship you any more, and it is better for you; you wouldn't be any happier. What did you do yesterday?'

'Indeed,' said the Dog, 'I hardly remember. I slept after you went away.

In the afternoon I took a drive in the carriage. Then I had my dinner.

My maid washed me and put me to bed. There is the difference between you and me; you have to wash yourself and put yourself to bed.'

'And you really don't find it a bore, living like this? Wouldn't you like something to do? Wouldn't you like some children to play with? The Fox seemed to find it very pleasant.'

'Children, indeed!' said the Dog, 'when I have got men and women.

Children are well enough for foxes and wild creatures; refined dogs know better; and, for doing--can't I stand on my toes? can't I dance? at least, couldn't I before I was so fat?'

'Ah! I see everybody likes what he was bred to,' sighed the Cat. 'I was bred to do nothing, and I must like that. Train the cat as the cat should go, and the cat will be happy and ask no questions. Never seek for impossibilities, Dog. That is the secret.'

'And you have spent a day in the woods to learn that,' said he. 'I could have taught you that. Why, Cat, one day when you were sitting scratching your nose before the fire, I thought you looked so pretty that I should have liked to marry you; but I knew I couldn't, so I didn't make myself miserable.'

The Cat looked at him with her odd green eyes. 'I never wished to marry you, Dog; I shouldn't have presumed. But it was wise of you not to fret about it. But, listen to me, Dog--listen. I met many creatures in the wood, all sorts of creatures, beasts and birds. They were all happy; they didn't find it a bore. They went about their work, and did it, and enjoyed it, and yet none of them had the same story to tell. Some did one thing, some another; and, except the Fox, each had got a sort of notion of doing its duty. The Fox was a rogue; he said he was; but yet he was not unhappy. His conscience never troubled him. Your work is standing on your toes, and you are happy. I have none, and that is why I am unhappy. When I came to think about it, I found every creature out in the wood had to get its own living. I tried to get mine, but I didn't like it, because I wasn't used to it; and as for knowing, the Fox, who didn't care to know anything except how to cheat greater fools than himself, was the cleverest fellow I came across. Oh! the Owl, Dog--you should have heard the Owl. But I came to this, that it was no use trying to know, and the only way to be jolly was to go about one's own business like a decent Cat. Cats' business seems to be killing rabbits and such-like; and it is not the pleasantest possible; so the sooner one is bred to it the better. As for me, that have been bred to do nothing, why, as I said before, I must try to like that; but I consider myself an unfortunate Cat.'

'So don't I consider myself an unfortunate Dog,' said her companion.

'Very likely you do not,' said the Cat.

By this time their breakfast was come in. The Cat ate hers, the Dog did penance for his; and if one might judge by the purring on the hearth-rug, the Cat, if not the happiest of the two, at least was not exceedingly miserable.

FABLES.

I.--THE LIONS AND THE OXEN.

Once upon a time a number of cattle came out of the desert to settle in the broad meadows by a river. They were poor and wretched, and they found it a pleasant exchange; except for a number of lions, who lived in the mountains near, and who claimed a right, in consideration of permitting the cattle to remain, to eat as many as they wanted among them. The cattle submitted, partly because they were too weak to help it, partly because the lions said it was the will of Jupiter; and the cattle believed them. And so they went on for many ages, till at last, from better feeding, the cattle grew larger and stronger, and multiplied into great numbers; and at the same time, from other causes, the lions had much diminished: they were fewer, smaller, and meaner-looking than they had been; and except in their own opinion of themselves, and in their appet.i.tes, which were more enormous than ever, there was nothing of the old lion left in them.

One day a large ox was quietly grazing, when one of these lions came up, and desired the ox to lie down, for he wanted to eat him. The ox raised his head, and gravely protested; the lion growled; the ox was mild, yet firm. The lion insisted upon his legal right, and they agreed to refer the matter to Minos.

When they came into court, the lion accused the ox of having broken the laws of the beasts. The lion was king, and the others were bound to obey. Prescriptive usage was clearly on the lion's side. Minos called on the ox for his defence.

The Ox said that, without consent of his own being asked, he had been born into the meadow. He did not consider himself much of a beast, but, such as he was, he was very happy, and gave Jupiter thanks. Now, if the lion could show that the existence of lions was of more importance than that of oxen in the eyes of Jupiter, he had nothing more to say; he was ready to sacrifice himself. But this lion had already eaten a thousand oxen. Lions' appet.i.tes were so insatiable that he was forced to ask whether they were really worth what was done for them,--whether the life of one lion was so n.o.ble that the lives of thousands of oxen were not equal to it? He was ready to own that lions had always eaten oxen, but lions when they first came to the meadow were a different sort of creature, and they themselves, too (and the ox looked complacently at himself), had improved since that time. Judging by appearances, though they might be fallacious, he himself was quite as good a beast as the lion. If the lions would lead lives more n.o.ble than oxen could live, once more he would not complain. As it was, he submitted that the cost was too great.

Then the Lion put on a grand face and tried to roar; but when he opened his mouth he disclosed a jaw so drearily furnished that Minos laughed, and told the ox it was his own fault if he let himself be eaten by such a beast as that. If he persisted in declining, he did not think the lion would force him.

II.--THE FARMER AND THE FOX.

A farmer, whose poultry-yard had suffered severely from the foxes, succeeded at last in catching one in a trap. 'Ah, you rascal!' said he, as he saw him struggling, 'I'll teach you to steal my fat geese!--you shall hang on the tree yonder, and your brothers shall see what comes of thieving!' The farmer was twisting a halter to do what he threatened, when the fox, whose tongue had helped him in hard pinches before, thought there could be no harm in trying whether it might not do him one more good turn.

'You will hang me,' he said, 'to frighten my brother foxes. On the word of a fox they won't care a rabbit-skin for it; they'll come and look at me; but you may depend upon it, they will dine at your expense before they go home again!'

'Then I shall hang you for yourself, as a rogue and a rascal,' said the farmer.

'I am only what Nature, or whatever you call the thing, chose to make me,' the Fox answered. 'I didn't make myself.'

'You stole my geese,' said the man.

'Why did Nature make me like geese, then?' said the Fox. 'Live and let live; give me my share, and I won't touch yours; but you keep them all to yourself.'

'I don't understand your fine talk,' answered the Farmer; 'but I know that you are a thief, and that you deserve to be hanged.'

His head is too thick to let me catch him so, thought the Fox; I wonder if his heart is any softer! 'You are taking away the life of a fellow-creature,' he said; 'that's a responsibility--it is a curious thing that life, and who knows what comes after it? You say I am a rogue--I say I am not; but at any rate I ought not to be hanged--for if I am not, I don't deserve it; and if I am, you should give me time to repent!' I have him now, thought the Fox; let him get out if he can.

'Why, what would you have me do with you?' said the man.

'My notion is that you should let me go, and give me a lamb, or goose or two, every month, and then I could live without stealing; but perhaps you know better than me, and I am a rogue; my education may have been neglected; you should shut me up, and take care of me, and teach me. Who knows but in the end I may turn into a dog?'

'Very pretty,' said the Farmer; 'we have dogs enough, and more, too, than we can take care of, without you. No, no, Master Fox, I have caught you, and you shall swing, whatever is the logic of it. There will be one rogue less in the world, anyhow.'

'It is mere hate and unchristian vengeance,' said the Fox.

'No, friend,' the Farmer answered, 'I don't hate you, and I don't want to revenge myself on you; but you and I can't get on together, and I think I am of more importance than you. If nettles and thistles grow in my cabbage-garden, I don't try to persuade them to grow into cabbages. I just dig them up. I don't hate them; but I feel somehow that they mustn't hinder me with my cabbages, and that I must put them away; and so, my poor friend, I am sorry for you, but I am afraid you must swing.'

PARABLE OF THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE.

It was after one of those heavy convulsions which have divided era from era, and left mankind to start again from the beginning, that a number of brave men gathered together to raise anew from the ground a fresh green home for themselves. The rest of the surviving race were sheltering themselves amidst the old ruins, or in the caves on the mountains, feeding on husks and sh.e.l.ls; but these men with clear heads and brave hearts ploughed and harrowed the earth, and planted seeds, and watered them, and watched them; and the seeds grew and shot up with the spring, but one was larger and fairer than the rest, and the other plants seemed to know it, for they crawled along till they reached the large one; and they gathered round it, and clung to it, and grew into it; and soon they became one great stem, with branching roots feeding it as from many fountains. Then the men got great heart in them when they saw that, and they laboured more bravely, digging about it in the hot sun, till at last it became great and mighty, and its roots went down into the heart of the earth, and its branches stretched over all the plain.

Then many others of mankind, when they saw the tree was beautiful, came down and gathered under it, and those who had raised it received them with open arms, and they all sat under its shade together, and gathered its fruits, and made their homes there, rejoicing in its loveliness. And ages pa.s.sed away, and all that generation pa.s.sed away, and still the tree grew stronger and fairer, and their children's children watched it age after age, as it lived on and flowered and seeded. And they said in their hearts, the tree is immortal--it will never die. They took no care of the seed; the scent of the flowers and the taste of the sweet fruit was all they thought of: and the winds of heaven, and the wild birds, and the beasts of the field caught the stray fruits and seed-dust, and bore the seed away, and scattered it in far-off soils.

And by-and-by, at a great great age, the tree at last began to cease to grow, and then to faint and droop: its leaves were not so thick, its flowers were not so fragrant; and from time to time the night winds, which before had pa.s.sed away, and had been never heard, came moaning and sighing among the branches. And the men for a while doubted and denied--they thought it was the accident of the seasons; and then a branch fell, and they said it was a storm, and such a storm as came but once in a thousand years. At last there could be no doubt that the leaves were thin and sere and scanty--that the sun shone through them--that the fruit was tasteless. But the generation was gone away which had known the tree in its beauty, and so men said it was always so--its fruits were never better--its foliage never was thicker.

So things went on, and from time to time strangers would come among them, and would say, Why are you sitting here under the old tree? there are young trees grown of the seed of this tree, far away, more beautiful than it ever was; see, we have brought you leaves and flowers to show you. But the men would not listen. They were angry, and some they drove away, and some they killed, and poured their blood round the roots of the tree, saying, They have spoken evil of our tree; let them feed it now with their blood. At last some of their own wiser ones brought out specimens of the old fruits, which had been laid up to be preserved, and compared them with the present bearing, and they saw that the tree was not as it had been; and such of them as were good men reproached themselves, and said it was their own fault. They had not watered it; they had forgotten to manure it. So, like their first fathers, they laboured with might and main, and for a while it seemed as if they might succeed, and for a few years branches, which were almost dead when the spring came round, put out some young green shoots again. But it was only for a few years; there was not enough of living energy in the tree.

Half the labour which was wasted on it would have raised another n.o.bler one far away. So the men grew soon weary, and looked for a shorter way: and some gathered up the leaves and shoots which the strangers had brought, and grafted them on, if perhaps they might grow; but they could not grow on a dying stock, and they, too, soon drooped and became as the rest. And others said, Come, let us tie the preserved fruits on again; perhaps they will join again to the stem, and give it back its life. But there were not enough, for only a few had been preserved; so they took painted paper and wax and clay, and cut sham leaves and fruits of the old pattern, which for a time looked bright and gay, and the world, who did not know what had been done, said--See, the tree is immortal: it is green again. Then some believed, but many saw that it was a sham, and liking better to bear the sky and sun, without any shade at all, than to live in a lie, and call painted paper leaves and flowers, they pa.s.sed out in search of other homes. But the larger number stayed behind; they had lived so long in falsehood that they had forgotten there was any such thing as truth at all; the tree had done very well for them--it would do very well for their children. And if their children, as they grew up, did now and then happen to open their eyes and see how it really was, they learned from their fathers to hold their tongues about it. If the little ones and the weak ones believed, it answered all purposes, and change was inconvenient. They might smile to themselves at the folly which they countenanced, but they were discreet, and they would not expose it. This is the state of the tree, and of the men who are under it at this present time:--they say it still does very well.

Perhaps it does--but, stem and boughs and paper leaves, it is dry for the burning, and if the lightning touches it, those who sit beneath will suffer.