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# The Original Fables of La Fontaine/The Wolf and the Fox

XL
THE WOLF AND THE FOX
(Book XII.—No. 9)
A fox once remarked to a wolf, "Dear friend, do you know that the utmost I can get for my meals is a tough old cock or perchance a lean hen or two. It is a diet of which I am thoroughly weary. You, on the other hand, feed much better than that, and with far less danger. My foraging takes me close up to houses; but you keep far away. I beg of you, comrade, to teach me your trade. Let me be the first of my race to furnish my pot with a plump sheep, and you will not find me ungrateful."
"Very well" replied the obliging wolf. "I have a brother recently dead, suppose you go and get his skin and wear it." This the fox accordingly did and the wolf commenced to give him lessons. "You must do this and act so, when you wish to separate the dogs from the flocks." At first Reynard was a little awkward, but he rapidly improved, and with a little practice he reached at last the perfection of wolfish strategy. Just as he had learned all that there was to know a flock approached. The sham wolf ran after it spreading terror all around, even as Patroclus wearing the armour ​of Achilles spread alarm throughout camp and city, when mothers, wives, and old men hastened to the temples for protection." In this case, the bleating army made sure there must be quite fifty wolves after them, and fled, dog and shepherd with them, to the neighbouring village, leaving only one sheep as a hostage.
This remaining sheep our thief instantly seized and was making off with it. But he had not gone more than a few steps when a cock crew near by. At this signal, which habit of life had led him to regard as a warning of dawn and danger, he dropped his disguising wolf-skin and, forgetting his sheep, his lesson, and his master, scampered off with a will.
Of what use is such shamming? It is an illusion to suppose that one is really changed by making the pretence. One resume's one's first nature upon the earliest occasion for hiding it.
# The Original Fables of La Fontaine/The Rat retired from the World

VII
THE RAT RETIRED FROM THE WORLD
(Book VII.—No. 3)
The ancients had a legend which told of a certain rat who, weary of the anxieties of this world, retired to a cheese, therein to live in peace. Profound solitude reigned around the hermit. He worked so hard with his feet and his teeth that in a few days he had a spacious dwelling and food in plenty. What more could he desire? He thrived well, growing large and fat. Blessings are showered upon those who are vowed to simplicity and renunciation!
One day a deputation from Rat-land waited upon him, begging that out of his abundance he would grant a slight dole towards fitting out a journey to a strange country where the rats hoped to get succour in their great war against the cat-tribe. Ratopolis was ​besieged, and owing to the poverty of the beleaguered republic they were forced to start with empty wallets. They asked but little, believing that in a few days help would arrive. "My friends," said the hermit, "earthly affairs no longer concern me. In what way could a poor recluse assist you? What could he do but pray for the help you need! My best hopes and wishes you may be assured of." With these words this latest among the saints shut his door.
Whom have I in mind, do you think, when I speak of this rat, so sparing of his help? A monk?—Oh, no! A dervish rather, for a monk, I suppose, is at all times charitable.
# The Original Fables of La Fontaine/The Schoolboy, the Pedant, and the Owner of a Garden

XXV
THE SCHOOLBOY, THE PEDANT, AND THE OWNER OF A GARDEN
(Book IX.—No. 5)
A youngster, who was doubly foolish and doubly a rogue—in which perhaps he savoured of the school he went to—was given, they say, to robbing a neighbour’s garden of its fruit and flowers. This may have been because he was too young to know better, and perhaps because teachers do not always mould the minds of young people in the right way.
The owner of the garden boasted in each season the very best of what was due. In spring he could show the most delightful blossoms and in autumn the very pick of all the apples.
One day he espied this schoolboy carelessly climbing a fruit tree and knocking off the buds, those sweet and fragile forerunners of promised fruit in abundance. The urchin even broke off a bough, and did so much other damage that the owner sent a message of complaint to the boy’s schoolmaster. This worthy soon appeared, and behind him a tribe of the scholars, who swarmed into the orchard and began behaving worse than the first one. The schoolmaster’s plan in thus aggravating the injury was really to make an opportunity for delivering them all a good lesson, which they should ​remember all their lives. He quoted Virgil and Cicero; he made many scientific allusions and ran his discourse to such a length that the little wretches were able to get all over the garden and despoil it in a hundred places.
I hate pompous and pedantic speeches that are out of place and never-ending; and I do not know a worse fool in the world than a naughty schoolboy—unless indeed it be the schoolmaster of such a boy. The better of them would never suit me as a neighbour.
# The Original Fables of La Fontaine/The Unhappily Married Man

VI
THE UNHAPPILY MARRIED MAN
(Book VII.—No. 2)
If goodness were always the comrade of beauty I would seek a wife to-morrow; but as divorce between these two is no new thing, and as there are so few lovely forms that enshrine lovely souls, thus uniting both one and the other delight, do not take it amiss that I refrain from seeking such a rare combination.
I have seen many marriages, but not one of them has held out allurements for me. Nevertheless, nearly the whole four quarters of mankind courageously expose themselves to this the greatest of all hazards, and—the whole four quarters usually repent it.
I will tell you of one who, having repented, found that there was nothing for it but to send home again his quarrelsome, avaricious, and jealous spouse. She was one whom nothing pleased; for her, nothing was right. For her, one rose too late; one retired too early. First it was this, then it was that, and then again 'twas something else. The servants raged. The husband was at his wit's end. "You think of nothing, sir." ​"You spend too much." "You gad about, sir." "You are idle." Indeed she had so much to say that, in the end, tired of hearing such a termagant, he sent her to her parents in the country. There she mixed with those who minded the turkeys and pigs until she was thought to be somewhat tamed, when the husband sent for her again.
"Well, my dear, how have you been getting on? How did you spend your time? Did you like the simple life of the country?"
"Oh, pretty well!" she said, "but what annoyed me was to see the laziness of those people. They are worse there than here. They showed no care whatever for the herds and flocks they were supposed to mind. I didn't forget to let them know what I thought of them. Of course, they didn't like it, and they all hated me in the end."
"Ah! my dear. If you fell foul of people whom you saw for but a moment or so in the day and when they returned in the evening—if you made them tired of you; what will the servants in this house become, who must have you railing at them the whole day long? And what will your poor husband do whom you expect to have near you all day and night too? Return to the village, my dear. Adieu! and if during my life the idea should possess me to have you back again, may I, for my sins, have two such as you for ever at my elbows in the world to come."
# The Original Fables of La Fontaine/The Wishes

IX
THE WISHES
(Book VII.—No. 6)
When the Great Mogul held empire, there were certain little sprites who used to undertake all sorts of tasks helpful to mankind. They would do housework, stable-work, and even gardening. But if one interfered with them, all would be spoilt.
One of these friendly sprites cultivated the garden of a worthy family living near the Ganges, His duties were performed deftly and noiselessly. He loved not only his master and mistress, but the garden also. Possibly the zephyrs, who are said to be friends of the sprites, helped him in his tasks. At any rate he did his very best, and never ceased in his efforts to load his hosts with every pleasure. To prove his zeal he would have stayed with these people for ever, in spite of the natural propensity of his kind for waywardness. But his mischievous fellow-sprites fell to plotting. They induced the chief of their band to remove him to another field of labour. This the chief promised and, either by caprice or by policy, finally brought about. Orders came that the devoted worker should set out for the uttermost part of Norway, there to take charge of a house which at all times of the year was covered with ​snow. So from being an Indian, the poor thing became a Laplander.
"I am forced to leave you," he said to his hosts, "but for what fault of mine this has come to pass I cannot tell. I only know that go I must, and in a very little while too; a month perhaps, or maybe only a week. Make the most of the interval. Fortunately, I can fulfil three wishes for you; but not more than three."
To mankind there is nothing very out-of-the-way in merely wishing. These good people decided that their first wish should be for abundance, and straightway Abundance, by the double-handful, poured gold into their coffers; wheat into their granaries; wine into their cellars. Repletion was everywhere. But, alas, what cares of direction, what account keeping; what time and anxiety this affluence involved!
Thieves plotted against them. Great lords borrowed from them. The prince taxed them. They were, in fact, reduced to misery by this excess of good fortune. At last they could endure it no longer. "Take back this awful overplus of wealth," they cried. "Even the poor are happy in comparison with us, and poverty is more covetable than such riches. Away, then, with these treasures! And thou, sweet Moderation, mother of all peace, sister of repose, come to us again!" With these words, which made their second wish, lo! Moderation returned and they received her with open arms, once again enjoying peace.
Thus at the end of these two wishes they were exactly where they were in the first place, and so it is with all who are given to wishing, and wasting in dreams the time they had better have spent in doing. But ​being philosophical people they laughed, and the sprite laughed with them. To profit by his generosity when he had left them, they hazarded their third wish and asked for wisdom. Wisdom is a treasure which never embarrasses.
# The Prince (Byerley)/Chapter 1

THE PRINCE.
CHAP. I.
How many Kinds of Principalities there are, and by what Means they are acquired.
All states, or sovereignties, which have, or have had, authority over mankind, have been and are, either republics or principalities.
Principalities are divided into those which are hereditary in one house who has long reigned over them, or into new ones.
Of those that are new, some are entirely so, as that of Francis Sforza at Milan; or, as members Incorporated with the hereditary states of the prince who acquires them, as that of the kingdom of Naples with respect to that of Spain.
These states, thus acquired, either live under a prince, or enjoy their liberty. The conqueror renders himself master of them, either by foreign arms, or by his own, by some fortunate event, or by his personal courage and his talents.
# The Prince (Byerley)/Advertisement

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IN order to render this volume more complete by the elucidation of various parts of the text in those points of history not generally known, we have thought proper to subjoin an Appendix, containing an account af Savanarola from a letter of Machiavelli to one of his friends. That Machiavelli did not believe in the diginity of his mission is abundantly evident; he only considered that he rendered a service to mankind as being the avowed enemy of the pope, the iniquities of whose spiritual and temporal government our author loudly exclaimed against.
The conduct of Borgia at Sinigaglia being more than once referred to, we have given the narrative of Machiavelli, who does not justify the deed, though he evidently considered it a partial evil, producing a general good; inasmuch as the parties kept Italy full of commotions and perpetual civil war.
We constantly hear people exclaim against breaches of national faith and the law of nations; and, therefore, we have given our author's farther considerations on that subject in his reflections on Livy, and his portrait of Ferdinand V. of Spain, ​which will be found highly interesting to the political reader.
The subject of Neutrality, which our author treats in Chapter XXI of "The Prince," being admirably continued in one of his letters to Francis Vettori, we thought it of sufficient importance to form a portion of the Appendix.
The preceding, are merely illustrations of the text; but the next article, the Duties of an Ambassador, is much more; and if this piece alone were preserved of Machiavelli, it would stamp him as a political writer of the first class.
The last article that we have thought proper to add is a fragment on the Means of securing Success, which, with the former article, ought to be perpetually before the eyes of every statesman and prince in Europe, as conveying that species of instruction of which they appear to be so wofully ignorant.
# The Prince (Byerley)/Chapter 15

CHAP. XV.
What deserves Praise or Blame in Men, and above all in Princes.
It is now of consequence to see how a prince ought to conduct himself towards his subjects and his friends. This matter having been already treated on by others, I am afraid of being taxed with presumption, if I shall dare to consider it in a different manner from them: but as my object is to write for those who judge soundly, I am about to speak of what really is, and not of what the vulgar imagine.
Men often figure to their imaginations republics and other governments which have never existed. There is so great a difference between that which actually is, and that which ought to be, that he who takes that for truth and reality, and which unquestionably ought to be, but unfortunately is not, embraces inevitable ruin. Thus, I will not hesitate to say that he who will always be perfectly good with those who are not so, cannot fail sooner or later to be ruined by it. A prince who wishes to maintain his power ought therefore to learn ​not to be always good, but to be such as circum- stances and the interests of his preservation may demand of him.
Thus laying aside the false ideas which have been formed as to princes, and resting only on those which are true, I say, that we never speak of a man, and above all of a prince, as to what he is, without attributing to him some merit or demerit— some bad or good quality. One mah iş liberal—anotber parsimonious; honourable or dishonourable; effeminate and pusillanimous, or courageous and enterprising; humane or cruel; affable or haughty; wise or debauchhed; honest or dishonest; good tempered or surly; sedate or inconsiderate; religious or impious, &.
It would, doubtless, be very bappy for a prince to unite in himself all good qualities; but as our nature does not allow so great a perfection, it is necessary to have prudence enough to preserve himself from those defects and vices which may ruin him; and as ta those which can only compromise his safety and the possession of his dominions, he ought, if in his.power, to guard himself against them; but if that is beyond his strength, he should not embarrass himself about them, but watch entirely those which may cause his ruin. He should pot fear to encounter some blame for vices which are important to. the support of his states; because; ​every thing well considered, a quality that appeared good and praiseworthy might be such as would inevitably destroy him, and another, that had the semblance of bad and vicious, might establish his welfare and security,
# The Ramayana/Book I/Canto XLIX: Ahalyá Freed

Then Ráma, following still his guide, Within the grove, with Lakshman, hied. Her vows a wondrous light had lent To that illustrious penitent. He saw the glorious lady, screened From eye of man, and God, and fiend, Like some bright portent which the care Of Brahmá launches through the air, Designed by his illusive art To flash a moment and depart: Or like the flame that leaps on high To sink involved in smoke and die:
Or like the full moon shining through The wintry mist, then lost to view: Or like the sun's reflection, cast Upon the flood, too bright to last: So was the glorious dame till then Removed from Gods' and mortals' ken, Till--such was Gautam's high decree-- Prince Ráma came to set her free.
Then, with great joy that dame to meet, The sons of Raghu clapped her feet; And she, remembering Gautam's oath, With gentle grace received them both; Then water for their feet she gave, Guest-gift, and all that strangers crave.
The prince, of courteous rule aware, Received, as meet, the lady's care. Then flowers came down in copious rain, And moving to the heavenly strain Of music in the skies that rang. The nymphs and minstrels danced and sang: And all the Gods with one glad voice Praised the great dame, and cried, 'Rejoice! Through fervid rites no more defiled, But with thy husband reconciled.' Gautam, the holy hermit knew-- For naught escaped his godlike view-- That Ráma lodged beneath that shade, And hasting there his homage paid. He took Ahalyá to his side. From sin and folly purified, And let his new-found consort bear In his austerities a share.
Then Ráma, pride of Raghu's race, Welcomed by Gautam, face to face, Who every highest honour showed, To Mithilá pursued his road.
# The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787/Volume 3/Appendix A/LXXXIV

​LXXXIV. George Washington to La Fayette.
Philadelphia August 15th. 1787
Altho’ the business of the Fœderal Convention is not yet clos’d, nor I, thereby, enabled to give you an account of its proceedings; yet, the opportunity afforded by Commodore Paul Jones’ Return to France is too favourable for me to omit informing you, that the present expectation of the members is, that it will end about the first of next month; when, or as soon after as it shall be in my power, I will communicate the result of our long deliberation to you.
# The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787/Volume 3/Appendix A/LXXXVIII

​LXXXVIII. William Blount to Governor Caswell.
Philadelphia, Monday, August 20th, 1787.
In a letter from New York I informed your Excellency of my reasons for leaving the Convention and returning to that place with Mr. Hawkins to represent this State in Congress. On Monday the 6th Inst. the Committee of detail made their Report to the Convention and on the Morning of Tuesday the 7th Hawkins and myself returned here and I again took my seat in Convention; so that tho’ I was not present all the time the Convention were debating and fixing the principles of the Government I have been and mean to continue to be present while the detail is under Consideration, that is until the Business of the Convention is Completed. From 10 to 4 O’Clock are the invariable hours of Session and as much Unanimity as can be expected prevails, yet I believe the business will not be completed in less than a month from this Time; Mr. Davie left us on this day week, his business at the approaching Superior Court called him so pressingly that he could not stay any longer. If he could have complyed with his own inclination, or those of the Delegation of the State he would have remained during the Session.
Mr. Martin informs us that on Monday next we must also submit to his leaving us. I wish it could be other ways…
Your Excellency is not now to be informed that I am not at liberty to explain the particulars of the mode of Government that the Convention have in Contemplation, but I will venture to assure you that it will be such a form of Government as I believe will be readily adopted by the several States because I believe it will be such as will be their respective interest to adopt.
# The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787/Volume 3/Appendix A/V

​V. Resolution of Congress.
Monday April 23. 1787
On motion of Mr Carrington seconded by Mr Johnson Resolved That the priviledge of sending & receiving letters and packets free of postage be extended to the members of the Convention to be held in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next in the same manner as is allowed to the members of Congress.—
# The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787/Volume 3/Appendix A/VIII

​VIII. George Washington: Diary
Monday, [May] 14.—This being the day appointed for the meeting of the Convention such members of it as were in town assembled at the State House, where it was found that two States only were represented, viz., Virginia and Pennsylvania. Agreed to meet again to-morrow at 11 o’clock.…
Tuesday, 15.—Repaired to the State Ho. at the hour appointed No more States represented, tho there were members (but not sufficient to form a quorum) from two or three others, viz., No. Carolina and Delaware, as also Jersey. Govr Randolph. of Virginia, came in to-day.
# The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787/Volume 3/Appendix A/LXXXV

​LXXXV. George Washington to Henry Knox.
Philadelphia. August 19 1787
By slow, I wish I could add, and sure movements, the business of the Convention progresses but to say when it will end, or what will be the result, is more than I dare venture to do and therefore shall hazard no opinion thereon. If some thing good does not proceed from the Cession the defects cannot with propriety be charged to the hurry with which the business has been conducted, notwithstanding which many things may be forgot—some of them not well digested—and others from the contrariety of sentiments with which such a body is pervaded become a mere nihility yet I wish a disposition may be found in Congress, the several State Legislatures—and the community at large to adopt the Government which may be agreed on in Convention because I am fully persuaded it is the best that can be obtained at the present moment under such diversity of ideas as prevail.
# The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787/Volume 3/Appendix A/VI

​VI. William Jackson to George Washington.
W. Jackson to His Excellency General Washington Mount-Vernon
Flattered by the opinions of some of my friends, who have expressed a wish that I would offer myself a Candidate for the Office of Secretary to the fœderal Covention—I presume to communicate to you my intention—and to request (so far as you shall deem it consonant with the more important interests of the Public) your influence in procuring me the honor of that appointment.
To say more on this subject would be to offend against that generous friendship, which I am persuaded, if held compatible with the service of our Country, will prompt an active goodness in my favor.
[Endorsed:] From W. Jackson Esqr recd. 24th. Aprl 1787
# The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787/Volume 3/Appendix A/LXXXVI

​LXXXVI. Alexander Hamilton to Rufus King.
New York, Aug. 20., 1787.
Since my arrival here, I have written to my colleagues, informing them, that if either of them would come down, I would accompany him to Philadelphia. So much for the sake of propriety and public opinion.
In the mean time if any material alteration should happen to be made in the plan now before the Convention, I will be obliged to you for a communication of it. I will also be obliged to you to let me know when your conclusion is at hand; for I would choose to be present at that time.