Aesop's Fables (Joseph Jacobs)
Jacobs 1. The Cock and the Pearl (Perry
503)
A cock was once strutting up and down the farmyard among the hens when
suddenly he espied something shinning amid the straw. "Ho! ho!"
quoth he, "that's for me," and soon rooted it out from beneath
the straw. What did it turn out to be but a Pearl that by some chance
had been lost in the yard? "You may be a treasure," quoth Master
Cock, "to men that prize you, but for me I would rather have a single
barley-corn than a peck of pearls."
Precious things are for those that can prize them.
The
Fables of Aesop, by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by
Richard Heighway (1894). The page images come from Google
Books. The digitized text comes from Project
Gutenberg. You can purchase this inexpensive Dover edition, The
Fables of Aesop by Joseph Jacobs from amazon.com.
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