Aesop's Fables (Joseph Jacobs)
Jacobs 31. The Fox and the Grapes (Perry
15)
One hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he
came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained
over a lofty branch. "Just the thing to quench my thirst," quoth
he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed
the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but
with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel,
but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air,
saying: "I am sure they are sour."
It is easy to despise what you cannot get.
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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