This fable may serve to give us a general view of the ingratitude of
the greatest part of mankind. Notwithstanding all the civility and
complaisance that is used among people where there is a common
intercourse of business, yet let the main spring, the probability of
their being serviceable to each other, either in point of pleasure or
profit, be but once broken, and farewell courtesy: so far from
continuing any regard in behalf of past favours, it is very well if they
forbear doing any thing that is injurious. If the master had only ceased
to caress and make much of the Old Hound, when he was past doing any
service, it had not been very strange; but to treat a poor creature ill,
not for a failure of inclination, but merely a defect of nature, must,
notwithstanding the crowd of examples there are to countenance it, be
pronounced inhuman and unreasonable.
There are two accounts upon which people that have been useful are
frequently neglected. One, when they are so decayed, either through age
or some accident, that they are no longer able to do the services they
have formerly done; the other, when the occasion or emergency which
required such talents no longer exists. Phædrus, who more than once
complains of the bad consequences of age, makes no other application to
this fable than by telling his friend Philetus, with some regret, that
he wrote it with such a view; having, it seems, been repaid with
neglect, or worse usage, for services done in his youth to those who
were then able to afford him a better recompense.