* * * * *

At another time Xanthus very foolishly bet with a scholar that he could drink the sea dry.  Alarmed, he consulted Aesop.

“To perform your wager,” said Aesop, “you know is impossible, but I will show you how to evade it.”

They accordingly met the scholar, and went with him and a great number of people to the seashore, where Aesop had provided a table with several large glasses upon it, and men who stood around with ladles with which to fill the glasses.

Xanthus, instructed by Aesop, gravely took his seat at the table.  The beholders looked on with astonishment, thinking that he must surely have lost his senses.

“My agreement,” said he, turning to the scholar, “is to drink up the sea.  I said nothing of the rivers and streams that are everywhere flowing into it.  Stop up these, and I will proceed to fulfill my engagement.”

* * * * *

It is said that at one time when Xanthus started out on a long journey, he ordered his servants to get all his things together and put them up into bundles so that they could carry them.

When everything had been neatly tied up, Aesop went to his master and begged for the lightest bundle.  Wishing to please his favorite slave, the master told Aesop to choose for himself the one he preferred to carry.  Looking them all over, he picked up the basket of bread and started off with it on the journey.  The other servants laughed at his foolishness, for that basket was the heaviest of all.

When dinner-time came, Aesop was very tired, for he had had a difficult time to carry his load for the last few hours.  When they had rested, however, they took bread from the basket, each taking an equal share.  Half the bread was eaten at this one meal, and when supper-time came the rest of it disappeared.

For the whole remainder of the journey, which ran far into the night and was over rough roads, up and down hills, Aesop had nothing to carry, while the loads of the other servants grew heavier and heavier with every step.

The people of the neighborhood in which Aesop was a slave one day observed him attentively looking over some poultry in a pen that was near the roadside; and those idlers, who spent more time in prying into other people’s affairs than in adjusting their own, asked why he bestowed his attention on those animals.

“I am surprised,” replied Aesop, “to see how mankind imitate this foolish animal.”

“In what?” asked the neighbors.

“Why, in crowing so well and scratching so poorly,” rejoined Aesop.

[Illustration:  “Aesop” Painting by Valasquez, Madrid ]

Fables, you know, are short stories, usually about animals and things, which are made to talk like human beings.  Fables are so bright and interesting in themselves that both children and grown-ups like to read them.  Children see first the story, and bye and bye, after they have thought more about it and have grown older, they see how much wisdom there is in the fables.