A jackdaw picked up some beautiful feathers left by the peacocks on
the ground. He stuck them into his own tail, and, thinking himself
too fine to mix with the other daws, strutted off to the peacocks,
expecting to be welcomed as one of themselves.
The peacocks at once saw through his disguise, and, despising him
for his foolishness and conceit, began to peck him, and soon he was
stripped of all his borrowed plumes.
Very much ashamed, the jackdaw went sadly home, meaning to join his
old friends as if nothing had happened. But they, remembering how he
had scorned them before, chased him away and would have nothing to do
with him.
"If you had been content," said one, "to remain as nature made you,
instead of trying to be what you are not, you would have neither been
punished by your betters nor despised by your equals."
* * * * *