Fable

FABLE, n.

A brief lie intended to illustrate some important truth. A statue of Eve and the Apple was accosted by a hippopotamus on a show-bill.

"Give me a bite of your apple," said the hippopotamous, "and see me smile."

"I would," said Eve, making a rough estimate of the probable dimensions of the smile, "but I have promised a bite to the Mammoth Cave, another to the crater of Vesuvius, and a third to the interval between the lowest anthropoid Methodist and the most highly organized wooden Indian. I must be just before I am generous."

This fable teaches that justice and generosity do not go hand in hand, the hand of generosity being commonly thrust in the pocket of Justice.

2010 Update: An allegory in which animals and insects are debased with human motives for the edification of children who only want sugar.

Once upon a time, a baby mouse left his home to seek the advice of a very wise sparrow. He eluded the cat, and braved the streets and darted from bush to bush avoiding wolves and foxes and finally reached the nest of the wise sparrow on a long thin bough of a tall, tall tree. The sparrow was not home, so the little mouse waited and waited patiently until a sudden gale pulled him from the bough and threw him over a cliff. Back at home his little mousie mother finally had time to study latin and prepare for her next litter.

Moral: Only a fool seeks wisdom without knowing what he'll find.

Bonus prophesy: I wasn't trying to be coy in comments. This blog now has more definitions than Bierce's original publication and much of the work is now finding one that hasn't been done already. In fact, that now takes more time than writing most posts. When The Reformation of Wolfshausen ends, theoretically on episode 95, presumably on November 6, I expect to close this site. After that, I intend to continue reading all of you and we can all still be in touch. I'll repeat this later, I'm sure, but I'm very appreciative of all of you for making this a fun project.

The Serpent and the Senator

Once upon a time, a serpent and a senator were sunning themselves beside a patch of hyacinths in a walled garden. The serpent was telling stories of his patriarch in the Garden of Eden when the Senator was outraged.

"He just gave them the apple?" the Senator bellowed, puffing on a pipe filled with dried populist.

"Yes," explained the serpent, curling cozily around the senator's elbow, "Of course. It was a trick so that his victims would rebel against God."

"And what," the senator asked, expelling two draughts of smoke that curved like horns, "did the couple do for your great-granddaddy after that?"

"Well," answered the serpent while repositioning his head atop the senator's soft thigh, "not much, to be honest. Mostly they went into exile and chased us with sticks."

The senator sat up slowly and petted the serpent in his lap, "that's my point!" The senator jabbed a finger aimlessly toward heaven. "You must have a purpose in mind to be sly. A quid pro quo! A cui bono! Nota bene-" Here, the senator lit a cigar filled with leaves of optimist from the heat of his pipe and blended the smokes in his mouth before gasping, "I would have hid the apple and denounced the tree of knowledge as barren and assured myself the votes of Adam and Eve as well as the worship of their descendants.

FAUSTIAN, adj. Filibuster-proof.

The two monks and the fortune teller

Once upon a time, two monks, Abba Nelson and Abba Abercrombie were walking through the desert when a caravan passed by on its way to Alexandria. A fortune teller in the train saw their simple robes and mistook them for father and son shepherds deprived of sheep. The seer hailed the two and, pulling a colorful deck of cards from his satin robes, laid three out in the sand.

"Old man," said the mage to Abba Abercrombie, the eldest Monk, "I will tell you what your destiny shall be. You are a poor man now but in five years time you will be as rich as a Sultan."

"You would deprive me of everything," answered Abba Abercrombie. "I have renounced worldly goods in favor of the wealth of God's word."

"By rich," explained the soothsayer, "I meant famous. Praise for your piety will carry your name far beyond where your feet can take you."

"You would deprive me of my purpose," answered the old ascetic. "I came to the desert to be alone with God."

The forecaster paused only a second before answering, "Ah, but when I say fame beyond your earthly travels, I mean your sacrifice will be sung by the angels in heaven, so assures my model."

The caravan returned to its course and when the farewells had been bade and the two monks were alone, the young monk turned to the older and prophesied, "One such as he, who foretells the fondest wishes of his solicitor will surely become advisor to an emperor."

"Yes," replied Abba Abercrombie, "and one so willing to explain himself will surely end his life in prison."

Moral: Only deception can be predicted accurately.

PROGNOSTICATE, v. To anticipate future conditions, such as concealment, anonymity and unaccountability.

The Aesthete and the Chimpanzee, A Fable for Children

Once upon a time, an aesthete and a chimpanzee sat down for tea and a continental breakfast. In the course of the conversation, the topic of religion naturally arose. The aesthete argued passionately that the soul of religion itself is not faith but ritual. The chimpanzee listened intently until, perhaps bored with the lecture, she leapt onto the tea service and did a back-flip, demonstrating her intellectual elitism.

HAUTEUR, n. Speaker envy.

A Fable

Once, in ancient times, two monks were walking together in the trailless Egyptian desert. As they climbed over a rise, they saw below them a vixen steal an egg from a bird's nest and scamper away into her own den, the entrance to which was in plain view.

Abba Nelson, the younger of the two monks asked his superior, "What are we to do? The egg to the bird represents her next generation, but what if this is the fox's only way to feed her young? As Christians, should we intervene to perhaps save the chick or ignore the theft and perhaps save the kits?"

"If the kits grow up will they yowl Jesus' name to sinners?" asked Abba Abercrombie, the older monk.

"Not in our language, surely, but who can tell? We do not know how God will use us."

"And if the egg should hatch, will the new dove be seen in foreign parts as a herald of the Holy Spirit?"

"If strangers don't know of the Holy Spirit, they won't receive it from the dove, I wouldn't think. But who knows how God chooses his agents?"

"Quite right," applauded Abba Abercrombie, "but we can guess that if God meant to stop a crime, he wouldn't send an old monk and a philosophical one to the scene."

INTERCEDE, v.t. To interfere in the natural order according to the creator's instruction.

A Fable for Children

The Gull and The Goats

Once upon a time, a gull landed on a manger in front of a herd of goats. "Brothers and sisters," the gull squawked, "you live as slaves! The farmer tells you are there are wolves beyond your fence and you clump up cowardly on the land within that fence. The farmer tells you this straw, this grass, is food and you eat it. Surely I tell you, the farmer tells you these things because if you left the pasture he knows what you have forgotten, that you will take wing to the water, catch fish and prosper! Because if you flew over the ocean, as is your birthright, you would see his daughters rise from the depths on a clam shell!"

"The bird makes sense," muttered a nanny and returned to eating her tuna can.

Moral: Men will lie to hide even fictional truths.

JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY, n. A theory of government by which yeoman farmers undertake the vices of aristocrats.

The Fox and The Penguin, a fable for children

Once upon a time, on an island of the Tierra Del Fuego, a fox met a penguin.

"Oh, if only you could live where I live or I could live where you live," the fox exclaimed, "we could be such great friends!"

"We can! We can!" answered the penguin. "I live in the world's harshest climate. It stands to reason, I can live in any weather!"

"Any weather??"

"Any!"

So the fox took the penguin to a volcano and said "Jump in! The lava is hot, but you can live in any weather!"

"That's not weather," answered the penguin. "It's geology!"

So the fox took the penguin to where the humans made charcoal and opened an oven and said to the penguin "Climb in! It may be hot but you can live in any weather!"

"That's not weather," answered the penguin. "It's combustion!"

Next the fox took the penguin to the Cordillera, and hopped out onto a thin branch that crossed a windy chasm. "Follow me," yelled the fox through the wind. "It may be windy but you can live in any weather!"

"That's not weather," answered the penguin. "It's geography!"

So, at last, the happy little penguin and the glum little fox returned to the Tierra Del Fuego where a cold winter storm blew. The fox began shivering. "I'm sorry," said the penguin. "It's too cold for you. Is there any way I can help?"

So the fox took the penguin's feathers and as the penguin froze, the warm fox in her coat said "What a poor thing you are! This is not weather but fashion!"

Moral: Stick to the sciences, where a few mysteries remain.

ENCOURAGEMENT, n. Murder in a small denomination.

The Serpent and The Supreme Court Justice, a fable for children

Once upon a time, a supreme court justice was tending his garden.  A serpent appeared between the daisies and the dahlias.  The two stared at each other, the justice waiting for the serpent to plead his case and the serpent expecting a curse.  While they faced each other in silence, a squirrel gobbled the cucumber bush and an owl took a shrieking mouse.

Moral: Crime is chaotic and justice still.

PRUDENCE, n. The mistrust of the mind toward the feet.

Two Monks at the granary

Once upon a time, the two monks, Abba Abercrombie and Abba Nelson met in front of a granary belonging to a monastery.  Abba Nelson asked his elder "If this granary is full of food and the hungry wait outside the walls, has this monastery not failed in its calling?"

Abba Abercrombie wisely answered, "Not at all, brother.  The people would not stay in the granary nor the grain remain outside the wall."

REDISTRIBUTION, n. The art of making sausage in live casing.

Godzilla and The Legislature: A fable for Children

Once upon a time, a giant fire-breathing lizard emerged from the depths of the ocean into a great city.  The tottering creature destroyed building after building, ripped out power transmission cables and crushed entire schools of children and teachers under foot.  The teachers had their unions, the utilities their lobbyists and the children were lamented loudly by cartoonists. So, when the legislature convened in extraordinary session, the focus was on any profiteers who might benefit from the ongoing carnage.  The hearings were generally considered probative, albeit tardy in the press.

Moral: There is no crisis so dire that in its midst the prospect of a profit will find thieves reluctant or public servants resistant.

CHAFF, n.  A kernal of legislation, the grain of journalism.  Weep germ.

The Tent City, a fable for children

Once upon a time, a small town stood on a narrow strip of land next to a river in the shadow of a high cliff.  Occasionally, stones would fall from the cliff and land harmlessly on the roofs of the town buildings while other, rarer ones crashed through and caused harm.  One day, a portion of the cliff gave way and brought a rumbling rock-slide down upon the town.

The town was devastated and many were lost.  The survivors swore such a tragedy must never occur again and a council was held to determine the future of the village.  Plans were made to study the cliff and design new defenses.  While the science and engineering took place, the townsfolk set up tents on the other side of the river where the plain began so as not to crowd progress.

Every day, the people would cross the river to the ruins of their town to excavate, analyze, design and build.  Clever alarms were imagined and constructed with bells hanging from the cliff wall which would ring whenever the cliffside moved.  Great scaffolds were built alongside the cliff to discourage crumbling.  Flowering vines were planted at the base of the cliff that would one day secure the sandstone, it was thought.

After a year, the townsfolk decided it was safe enough to rebuild their homes and granaries when a wise man among the people noted that in the year spent on the flat side of the river not one of them had been injured by falling stone.  And so the people crossed the river one last time, carrying the tents which were safer than structures of stone and wood.  Or so the archeologists tell us.

MORAL: The wise man wades into danger while the fool swims.

LESSON, n. The happy error after.

RIP, Tobin

A Fable (for children)

Once upon a time in Alaska, a troll met three gruff billy goats, crossing a bridge. The first two billy goats tricked him into waiting on the third who was large and feisty. Just when the troll was about to set on this last billy goat, the last billy goat set on him and poked out his eyes and crushed his spine and burst his ear drums and ate his heart. Finally, the billy goat tossed the troll over the side into the deep, dark chasm below. As the troll fell he yelled "I need a new bridge..." and the billy goat, who was on his way to Washington to make himself fat, called after him "Then run for the Senate, Mr. Stevens!"

Moral:  It is a lonesome bridge that crosses no line.

INFRASTRUCTURE, n.  The network of public goods serving private interests at the behest of secret associations.  A structure the edifice of which fills the horizon and the purpose for which fits in a desk drawer.

The leopard and the lamb

A leopard and a lamb

Met upon a hillside

The lamb was looking for his flock.

The leopard for his pride.

The lamb rued his misfortune

And the absent-minded shepherd

And the meander he'd taken

That brought him to this leopard.

"Oh, mourn the lamb without a flock!

For he's but meat beneath the wool!"

"If I had my pride," leopard replied

"My stomach would be full."

Moral:  Solitude is a traveling table.

THANKFULNESS, n.  Gravy poured over the unlucky by the hungry.

The Crowded Monastery

Once upon a time, two sacred abbas met in the desert of Egypt, where they had gone to avoid temptation. "The caves grow crowded," the young monk complained. "So many left the sinful village for purity, or to be hermits or seeking silence and stillness and come to these caves in the desert that our refuge has become a bustling, chaotic and lawless city of brothers. What are we to do?"

The older monk answered wisely, "hold elections."

CONSEQUENCE, n. An enemy of intention, neighbor to destiny and sister of a wish.

A Fable (for children)

A demon met a rich man's son, pious and devout, and shewed him from atop the world a city made of marble, limestone and alabaster which stretched white across the plain below. "Ask me once," the demon whispered," and I will set this city on fire and the tormented will scream your name. Their pain will be your glory, for you alone will know why they suffer and you will be the king of agony." But the man answered "No, imp! My father was a successful man who had fifty wives and he taught me 'To do is to own, to ask is to owe.' Get away from me and tempt me no more. But can I borrow a match?"

Next the demon found another son of privilege, this one frivolous and wasteful, and took him to the same mountaintop.  From the peak, he showed the boy a giant carnival that filled the valley below with whirling amusements, bright lights, gentle elephants and the music of a calliope.  All the people were enjoying the sights, sounds and smells so much that they never noticed the locked gates around the fiesta or the wide river of boiling sulfur that completed a circle around the gates.  "Offer me your soul," the demon whispered, "and I will make you the wisest man in this happy place, for only you will see the trap."  But the young man answered, "Begone Beelzebub!  For my mother was a debutante who taught me 'A secret is a miser's cash and a merchant's trash.'  What's on TV?"  

So the sullen but resourceful demon went to a seminary, telling himself, "Evil is unreliable and folly knows not wrong, but a tender-hearted wise man is up for mischief every day by dawn."

Moral:  The hateful and indolent can be saved with a rhyme, the honest are lost to reason.

MAXIM, n.  A gift from the listless to the lost.

The Lioness and the Coyote

Once upon a time, a lioness had a coyote cornered and the coyote pled his case.

"Behold!" said the coyote, "do we not both hunt for our prey?  do we not both live in open country?  Of course we do!  We are both sometimes social and often solitary.  I have to say, there's a little bit of lion in me and there must be some coyote in you."

"Indeed," said the lioness.  "Quite a bit, actually," as she began with his liver.

Moral:  Politics makes for fine dining.

REALPOLITIK, n.  A throat with no tongue behind teeth without lips.

Happy birthday, Mama!  See you this afternoon.

Rabbit, rabbit

Two Rabbits

Once upon a time, there were two rabbits hoppity-hopping across a glade. "If I were quicker," the first one told the second one, "No predator would ever catch me."

"And if I had bigger teeth," answered the second one, "I would eat coyotes."

Moral: A wish is the second of half of a gift.

YEARN, v.i. To indulge the appetite for hunger.

A Fable

The Poet and the Praying Mantis

Once upon a time, an old poet called Pancho sat at his desk in a small hotel room in Havana, the sole window of which that looked out across a street and upon the sea. He was trying to think of something worthy of inscribing an ode to. Everywhere he cast his mind, to the half-empty bottle of bourbon on his desk or the spry, beautiful and careless young Cuban women who dashed and trilled together like magpies below his window to the political movements that called for peace and sensibility- everything seemed so trite and obvious and temporary. An ode is love that lasts as long as language and needs an object whose beauty is permanent and whose merit is above controversy. The poet deplored to his muse her infidelity, "Oh, send me something to love!"

Just then, a long-bodied bug hopped through the open window and on to the desk. The insect was gold, rather than green, and glowed with a soft light that made the objects on which her light shone suddenly beautiful whether a blank sheet of paper or an unfinished cigarette.

"My mother, Euterpe, to me has commanded
A flight through your window tonight
To answer your prayer, for, as you demanded
A love made from reflections of light,
My heart is immortal, o, write me a poem!
I care for the sick and the felon
My beauty's as fertile as the softest loam
And amusement grows sweet as a melon."

The poet, inspired by the beaming bug, picked up his pen and used it to flick the cricket back through the window. "What the hell rhymes with praying mantis?" he growled into the musky, swirling, tropical night.

Moral: Inspiration is the reflection of consent, beheld in a mirror.

ODE, n. An appreciation of any vessel strong enough to constrain a tortured metaphor, large enough to hold a poet's delusion, and conveniently named.
PRAYING MANTIS, n. One who worships herself in the morning, the grass in the afternoon and the sphinx in the evening. Semi-homophone of graying Francis.

Two Fables

The Elephant and the Orangutan

At the annual conference of the Pan-Phylum Prehensility Society of Southeast Asia, an elephant delivered a much-anticipated keynote address, entitled Magnitude and Manipulation: The Pachyderm Approach. He began by exclaiming "Flexibility is queen of the evolutionary arts! Not only can the elephant's trunk bend in any direction at any point but it handles liquids, solids and gas!" In the second row, an Orangutan drummed on her desk with twenty fingers and toes, and wondered what life would be like with a tail.

PREHENSILE, adj. Adapted for self-expression and theft.

The Two Monks

Once upon a time, two monks named Abba Abercrombie and Abba Nelson crossed paths in the desert, days from any stream or spring. Abba Abercrombie offered Abba Nelson the last of his water. Abba Nelson gratefully drank, and asked Abba Abercrombie how to repay the kindness.

"It is a greater kindness to accept hospitality than to give it. It is I who is in your debt." Abba Abercrombie explained.

"But, if you had been thirsty and I had water would you have taken the last of it?" Abba Nelson inquired, worried that he had left his new friend in jeopardy.

"No, brother," the holy man answered, "for I was taught that where kindness kills, it is better to steal." and he left with the younger monk's food and his debt repaid.

CONSIDERATION, n. The mental manufacture of fellowship and alibi.

A Fable

The Mirror Mogul

Once upon a time, an industrialist lived in a mansion, high above town. In his mansion there were angled mirrors covering each wall and the ceiling so that wherever he went in his home, he appeared everywhere and wherever he looked he saw himself many times. One day he entered a rarely used room and noticed one Mirror was broken. Soon, all the countless reflections of him throughout the house were cursing silently but the man could not scold them for he had cursed first.

Moral: One must be scrupulous about behavior when in the public eye.

BROADCAST, v.i. To talk to yourself en masse.