The Goatherd and the Goats

It was a stormy day, and the snow was falling fast, when a Goatherd drove his Goats, all white with snow, into a desert cave for shelter.

There he found that a herd of Wild Goats, more numerous and larger than his own, had already taken possession.

So, thinking to secure them all, he left his own Goats to take care of themselves, and threw the branches which he had brought for them to the Wild Goats to browse on.

But when the weather cleared up, he found his own Goats had perished from hunger, while the Wild Goats were off and away to the hills and woods.

So the Goatherd returned a laughing-stock to his neighbors, having failed to gain the Wild Goats, and having lost his own.

They who neglect their old friends for the sake of new ones, are rightly served if they lose both.

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The Herdsman and the Lost Bull

A Herdsman, tending kine in a forest, lost a Bull-calf from the fold. After a long and fruitless search, he made a vow that, if he could only discover the thief who had stolen the Calf he would offer a lamb in sacrifice to the Guardian Deities of the forest.

Not long afterward, as he ascended a small hillock, he saw at its foot a Lion feeding on the Calf. Terrified at the sight, he lifted his eyes and his hands to heaven, and said:

"Just now I vowed to offer a lamb to the Guardian Deities of the forest if I could only find out who had robbed me; but now that I have discovered the thief, I would willingly add a full-grown Bull to the Calf I have lost, and give them both to the guardians of the forest, if I may only secure my own escape from this terrible Lion in safety."

That which we are anxious to find, we are sometimes even more anxious to escape from, when we have succeeded in finding it.

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