Collected Fables

by James Thurber

  The lovely Luna moth tried to cajole her admirer into opening the window—so that she could fly to the fascinating flame above the fireplace, but she did not tell him this. She let him believe that his drab gray lovemaking had won her heart. In his desire to reach her, he flew against the windowpane time and time again, and finally made a small opening in it, and then fluggered crazily to the floor, dead of a broken head and wings and body. The lovely Luna, whose desire for the star is a matter of immortal record, flew swiftly and gracefully toward the candle on the mantelpiece and was consumed in its flame with a little zishing sound like that made by a lighted cigarette dropped in a cup of coffee.

  MORAL: Love is blind, but desire just doesn’t give a good goddamn.

  The Lover and His Lass

  AN ARROGANT GRAY parrot and his arrogant mate listened, one African afternoon, in disdain and derision, to the lovemaking of a lover and his lass, who happened to be hippopotamuses.

  “He calls her snooky-ookums,” said Mrs. Gray. “Can you believe that?”

  “No,” said Gray. “I don’t see how any male in his right mind could entertain affection for a female that has no more charm than a capsized bathtub.”

  “Capsized bathtub, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Gray. “Both of them have the appeal of a coastwise fruit steamer with a cargo of waterlogged basketballs.”

  But it was spring, and the lover and his lass were young, and they were oblivious of the scornful comments of their sharp-tongued neighbors, and they continued to bump each other around in the water, happily pushing and pulling, backing and filling, and snorting and snaffling. The tender things they said to each other during the monolithic give-and-take of their courtship sounded as lyric to them as flowers in bud or green things opening. To the Grays, however, the bumbling romp of the lover and his lass was hard to comprehend and even harder to tolerate, and for a time they thought of calling the A.B.I., or African Bureau of Investigation, on the ground that monolithic lovemaking by enormous creatures who should have become decent fossils long ago was probably a threat to the security of the jungle. But they decided instead to phone their friends and neighbors and gossip about the shameless pair, and describe them in mocking and monstrous metaphors involving skidding buses on icy streets and overturned moving vans.

  Late that evening, the hippopotamus and the hippopotama were surprised and shocked to hear the Grays exchanging terms of endearment. “Listen to those squawks,” wuffled the male hippopotamus.

  “What in the world can they see in each other?” gurbled the female hippopotamus.

  “I would as soon live with a pair of unoiled garden shears,” said her inamoratus.

  They called up their friends and neighbors and discussed the incredible fact that a male gray parrot and a female gray parrot could possibly have any sex appeal. It was long after midnight before the hippopotamuses stopped criticizing the Grays and fell asleep, and the Grays stopped maligning the hippopotamuses and retired to their beds.

  MORAL: Laugh and the world laughs with you, love and you love alone.

  The Fox and the Crow

  A CROW, PERCHED in a tree with a piece of cheese in his beak, attracted the eye and nose of a fox. “If you can sing as prettily as you sit,” said the fox, “then you are the prettiest singer within my scent and sight.” The fox had read somewhere, and somewhere, and somewhere else, that praising the voice of a crow with a cheese in his beak would make him drop the cheese and sing. But this is not what happened to this particular crow in this particular case.

  “They say you are sly and they say you are crazy,” said the crow, having carefully removed the cheese from his beak with the claws of one foot, “but you must be nearsighted as well. Warblers wear gay hats and colored jackets and bright vests, and they are a dollar a hundred. I wear black and I am unique.” He began nibbling the cheese, dropping not a single crumb.

  “I am sure you are,” said the fox, who was neither crazy nor nearsighted, but sly. “I recognize you, now that I look more closely, as the most famed and talented of all birds, and I fain would hear you tell about yourself, but I am hungry and must go.”

  “Tarry awhile,” said the crow quickly, “and share my lunch with me.” Whereupon he tossed the cunning fox the lion’s share of the cheese, and began to tell about himself. “A ship that sails without a crow’s nest sails to doom,” he said. “Bars may come and bars may go, but crow bars last forever. I am the pioneer of flight, I am the map maker. Last, but never least, my flight is known to scientists and engineers, geometrists and scholars, as the shortest distance between two points. Any two points,” he concluded arrogantly.

  “Oh, every two points, I am sure,” said the fox. “And thank you for the lion’s share of what I know you could not spare.” And with this he trotted away into the woods, his appetite appeased, leaving the hungry crow perched forlornly in the tree.

  MORAL: ’Twas true in Aesop’s time, and La Fontaine’s, and now, no one else can praise thee quite so well as thou.

  Variations on the Theme

  I

  A fox, attracted by the scent of something, followed his nose to a tree in which sat a crow with a piece of cheese in his beak. “Oh, cheese,” said the fox scornfully. “That’s for mice.”

  The crow removed the cheese with his talons and said, “You always hate the thing you cannot have, as, for instance, grapes.”

  “Grapes are for the birds,” said the fox haughtily. “I am an epicure, a gourmet, and a gastronome.”

  The embarrassed crow, ashamed to be seen eating mouse food by a great specialist in the art of dining, hastily dropped the cheese. The fox caught it deftly, swallowed it with relish, said “Merci,” politely, and trotted away.

  II

  A fox had used all his blandishments in vain, for he could not flatter the crow in the tree and make him drop the cheese he held in his beak. Suddenly, the crow tossed the cheese to the astonished fox. Just then the farmer, from whose kitchen the loot had been stolen, appeared, carrying a rifle, looking for the robber. The fox turned and ran for the woods. “There goes the guilty son of a vixen now!” cried the crow, who, in case you do not happen to know it, can see the glint of sunlight on a gun barrel at a greater distance than anybody.

  III

  This time the fox, who was determined not to be outfoxed by a crow, stood his ground and did not run when the farmer appeared, carrying a rifle and looking for the robber.

  “The teeth marks in this cheese are mine,” said the fox, “but the beak marks were made by the true culprit up there in the tree. I submit this cheese in evidence, as Exhibit A, and bid you and the criminal a very good day.” Whereupon he lit a cigarette and strolled away.

  IV

  In the great and ancient tradition, the crow in the tree with the cheese in his beak began singing, and the cheese fell into the fox’s lap. “You sing like a shovel,” said the fox, with a grin, but the crow pretended not to hear and cried out, “Quick, give me back the cheese! Here comes the farmer with his rifle!”

  “Why should I give you back the cheese?” the wily fox demanded.

  “Because the farmer has a gun, and I can fly faster than you can run.”

  So the frightened fox tossed the cheese back to the crow, who ate it, and said, “Dearie me, my eyes are playing tricks on me—or am I playing tricks on you? Which do you think?” But there was no reply, for the fox had slunk away into the woods.

  The Bears and the Monkeys

  IN A DEEP forest there lived many bears. They spent the winter sleeping, and the summer playing leap-bear and stealing honey and buns from nearby cottages. One day a fast-talking monkey named Glib showed up and told them that their way of life was bad for bears. “You are prisoners of pastime,” he said, “addicted to leap-bear, and slaves of honey and buns.”

  The bears were impressed and frightened as Glib went on talking. “Your forebears have done this to you,” he said. Glib was so glib, glibber than the glibbest monkey they had ever seen before, that the bears bel
ieved he must know more than they knew, or than anybody else. But when he left, to tell other species what was the matter with them, the bears reverted to their fun and games and their theft of buns and honey.

  Their decadence made them bright of eye, light of heart, and quick of paw, and they had a wonderful time, living as bears had always lived, until one day two of Glib’s successors appeared, named Monkey Say and Monkey Do. They were even glibber than Glib, and they brought many presents and smiled all the time. “We have come to liberate you from freedom,” they said. “This is the New Liberation, twice as good as the old, since there are two of us.”

  So each bear was made to wear a collar, and the collars were linked together with chains, and Monkey Do put a ring in the lead bear’s nose, and a chain on the lead bear’s ring. “Now you are free to do what I tell you to do,” said Monkey Do.

  “Now you are free to say what I want you to say,” said Monkey Say. “By sparing you the burden of electing your leaders, we save you from the dangers of choice. No more secret ballots, everything open and aboveboard.”

  For a long time the bears submitted to the New Liberation, and chanted the slogan the monkeys had taught them: “Why stand on your own two feet when you can stand on ours?”

  Then one day they broke the chains of their new freedom and found their way back to the deep forest and began playing leap-bear again and stealing honey and buns from the nearby cottages. And their laughter and gaiety rang through the forest, and birds that had ceased singing began singing again, and all the sounds of the earth were like music.

  MORAL: It is better to have the ring of freedom in your ears than in your nose.

  The Father and His Daughter

  A LITTLE GIRL was given so many picture books on her seventh birthday that her father, who should have run his office and let her mother run the home, thought his daughter should give one or two of her new books to a little neighbor boy named Robert, who had dropped in, more by design than by chance.

  Now, taking books, or anything else, from a little girl is like taking arms from an Arab, or candy from a baby, but the father of the little girl had his way and Robert got two of her books. “After all, that leaves you with nine,” said the father, who thought he was a philosopher and a child psychologist, and couldn’t shut his big fatuous mouth on the subject.

  A few weeks later, the father went to his library to look up “father” in the Oxford English Dictionary, to feast his eyes on the praise of fatherhood through the centuries, but he couldn’t find volume F–G, and then he discovered that three others were missing, too—A–B, L–M, and V–Z. He began a probe of his household, and soon learned what had become of the four missing volumes.

  “A man came to the door this morning,” said his little daughter, “and he didn’t know how to get from here to Torrington, or from Torrington to Winsted, and he was a nice man, much nicer than Robert, and so I gave him four of your books. After all, there are thirteen volumes in the Oxford English Dictionary, and that leaves you nine.”

  MORAL: This truth has been known from here to Menander*: what’s sauce for the gosling’s not sauce for the gander.

  The Cat in the Lifeboat

  A FELINE NAMED William got a job as copy cat on a daily paper and was surprised to learn that every other cat on the paper was named Tom, Dick, or Harry. He soon found out that he was the only cat named William in town. The fact of his singularity went to his head, and he began confusing it with distinction. It got so that whenever he saw or heard the name William, he thought it referred to him. His fantasies grew wilder and wilder, and he came to believe that he was the Will of Last Will and Testament, and the Willy of Willy Nilly, and the cat who put the cat in catnip. He finally became convinced that Cadillacs were Catillacs because of him.

  William became so lost in his daydreams that he no longer heard the editor of the paper when he shouted, “Copy cat!” and he became not only a ne’er-do-well, but a ne’er-do-anything. “You’re fired,” the editor told him one morning when he showed up for dreams.

  “God will provide,” said William jauntily.

  “God has his eye on the sparrow,” said the editor.

  “So’ve I,” said William smugly.

  William went to live with a cat-crazy woman who had nineteen other cats, but they could not stand William’s egotism or the tall tales of his mythical exploits, honors, blue ribbons, silver cups, and medals, and so they all left the woman’s house and went to live happily in huts and hovels. The cat-crazy woman changed her will and made William her sole heir, which seemed only natural to him, since he believed that all wills were drawn in his favor. “I am eight feet tall,” William told her one day, and she smiled and said, “I should say you are, and I am going to take you on a trip around the world and show you off to everybody.”

  William and his mistress sailed one bitter March day on the S.S. Forlorna, which ran into heavy weather, high seas, and hurricane. At midnight the cargo shifted in the towering seas, the ship listed menacingly, SOS calls were frantically sent out, rockets were fired into the sky, and the officers began running up and down companionways and corridors shouting, “Abandon ship!” And then another shout arose, which seemed only natural to the egotistical cat. It was, his vain ears told him, the loud repetition of “William and children first!” Since William figured no lifeboat would be launched until he was safe and sound, he dressed leisurely, putting on white tie and tails, and then sauntered out on deck. He leaped lightly into a lifeboat that was being lowered, and found himself in the company of a little boy named Johnny Green and another little boy named Tommy Trout, and their mothers, and other children and their mothers. “Toss that cat overboard!” cried the sailor in charge of the lifeboat, and Johnny Green threw him overboard, but Tommy Trout pulled him back in.

  “Let me have that tomcat,” said the sailor, and he took William in his big right hand and threw him, like a long incompleted forward pass, about forty yards from the tossing lifeboat.

  When William came to in the icy water, he had gone down for the twenty-fourth time, and had thus lost eight of his lives, so he only had one left. With his remaining life and strength he swam and swam until at last he reached the sullen shore of a sombre island inhabited by surly tigers, lions, and other great cats. As William lay drenched and panting on the shore, a jaguar and a lynx walked up to him and asked him who he was and where he came from. Alas, William’s dreadful experience in the lifeboat and the sea had produced traumatic amnesia, and he could not remember who he was or where he came from.

  “We’ll call him Nobody,” said the jaguar.

  “Nobody from Nowhere,” said the lynx.

  And so William lived among the great cats on the island until he lost his ninth life in a barroom brawl with a young panther who had asked him what his name was and where he came from and got what he considered an uncivil answer.

  The great cats buried William in an unmarked grave because, as the jaguar said, “What’s the good of putting up a stone reading ‘Here lies Nobody from Nowhere’?”

  MORAL: O why should the spirit of mortal be proud, in this little voyage from swaddle to shroud?

  The Bragdowdy and the Busybody

  A FEMALE HARE, who had been born with a foot in everybody’s affairs, became known in her community as “that big Belgian busybody.” She was always listening to the thumpings of her neighbors. “You’re all ears,” her mate snarled one day. “For God’s sake, get some laissez faire.” There was no answer, for she had hopped next door to exhort, reproach, and upbraid a female guinea pig who had borne one hundred and seventy-three young and had then let herself go. She had become a bragdowdy, and spent her time weeping over True Pigtales.

  “Where is your civic spirit?” demanded Mrs. Hare. “And your country, state, federal, and global spirit? Look at me. I am president, or chairwoman, of practically everything, and founder of the Listening Post, an organization of eight hundred females with their ears to the ground.”

  The male gui
nea pig, who had been lying on a lettuce leaf, taking it easy, tried to hide from his nosy neighbor, but she came into the room, buttocky buttocky, before he could get out of bed.

  “A big strapping male like you,” she scoffed, “lying around the house when you ought to be at the laboratory, having injections to see whether some new serum is deadly or not.” The male guinea pig’s teeth began to chatter, and when a male guinea pig’s teeth chatter it doesn’t mean he’s afraid, it means he’s mad. But the Belgian busybody didn’t care how anybody felt except herself. “You and your mate should join things and do things!” she exclaimed. “Shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone, best foot forward, finger in the pie, knee on the chest!”

  Before many weeks had passed, Mrs. Pig developed a guilt complex that manifested itself in an activity compulsion. She gave up reading True Pigtales, took her mate’s edible bed away from him, straightened up the house, and joined twenty-four up-and-coming organizations. She became famous for keeping everybody on his toes, whether that’s where he wanted to be or not. She was made chairman of the Bear a Basket of Babies Committee, secretary of the Get Behind Your Mate and Push Movement, treasurer of the Don’t Let Dad Dawdle League, inventor of its slogan, “He can do twice as much in half the time if he puts your mind to it,” and, in the end, national president of the Daughters of Ambitious Rodents.

  The now celebrated Mrs. Pig also found time to bear thirty-seven more offspring, which was thirty-seven more than her mate had wanted. They drove him to Distraction, where he found the male Belgian hare, who had been driven there by his own mate’s private and public projects, pryings, proddings, and pushings. The two males had such a quiet and peaceful time together without their mates that they decided to keep it that way. Representatives of ninety-six different organizations—the seventy-two Mrs. Hare belonged to and Mrs. Pig’s twenty-four—argued with them in vain. They ran away one night while their mates were addressing the He Could If He Wanted To, He’s Just Not Trying Club, without so much as a fare-thee-well or a note on a pillow, and leaving no forwarding address. They decided to go to Tahiti to forget, but long before they reached Tahiti they had forgot.