[Illustration: THE JACKDAW AND PEACOCKS.]
A certain Jackdaw was so proud and ambitious, that, not contented to
live within his own sphere, he picked up the feathers which fell from
the Peacocks, stuck them in among his own, and very confidently
introduced himself into an assembly of those beautiful birds. They soon
found him out, stripped him of his borrowed plumes, and, falling upon
him with their sharp bills, punished him as his presumption deserved.
Upon this, full of grief and affliction, he returned to his old
companions, and would have flocked with them again; but they, knowing
his late life and conversation, industriously avoided him, and refused
to admit him into their company: and of them, at the same time, gave him
this serious reproof--'If, friend, you could have been contented with
our station, and had not disdained the rank in which Nature had placed
you, you had not been used so scurvily by those upon whom you intruded
yourself, nor suffered the notorious slight which now we think ourselves
obliged to put upon you.'