A certain Jack-daw 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 lived with them again; but they, knowing his
late life and conversation, industriously avoided him, and refused to
admit him into their company; and one 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.