Angel's Moral Stories II

Abstract

There are forty numbered fables here in a paperback book measuring 4¾ x 6¾. There is a T of C at the beginning. Each fable gets two or three simple black-and-white illustrations. Almost all of these fables are from Aesop. Perhaps the only one that is new to me is The Stableman and the King (48), which ends with the stableman fishing in main street and explaining If the farmer's two oxen can be parents to a foal, why can't I fish in the market? The illustrations are simple. I think that the person who sketched the snow-laden olive tree on 22 and 23 may never have seen snow! In The Farmer and the Jackal (11), the farmer ties the hated jackal to a post with a string and then lights his tail on fire. The fire burns the string, the jackal runs into haystack, and soon the farmer has lost everything. The moral is unclear but intriguing: Two things a man should never be angry at: when he can help, and when he cannot help. Might that mean Do not get angry when you can help yourself from getting angry and when you cannot help yourself from getting angry? I am surprised to find that the frog who churns milk into butter and so escapes is called Ftrthy (27). Might that have been Frothy? The cover's illustration of the good-natured bald man who loses his toupee, repeated in black-and-white on 79, is well done. FM here has the strange involvement of a log, under which the frog swims, and so he loses the mouse who has been on his back (83).