The Vain Jackdaw

A jackdaw picked up some beautiful feathers left by the peacocks on the ground. He stuck them into his own tail, and, thinking himself too fine to mix with the other daws, strutted off to the peacocks, expecting to be welcomed as one of themselves. The peacocks at once saw through his disguise, and, despising him for his foolishness and conceit, began to peck him, and soon he was stripped of all his borrowed plumes. Very much ashamed, the jackdaw went sadly home, meaning to join his old friends as if nothing had happened. But they, remembering how he had scorned them before, chased him away and would have nothing to do with him. "If you had been content," said one, "to remain as nature made you, instead of trying to be what you are not, you would have neither been punished by your betters nor despised by your equals."