Читать книгу Bewick's Select Fables of Æsop and others - Aesop - Страница 33

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Cowards are incapable of true Friendship.

Two Friends, setting out together upon a journey which led through a dangerous forest, mutually promised to assist each other if they should happen to be assaulted. They had not proceeded far before they perceived a Bear making towards them with great rage. There were no hopes in flight; but one of them, being very active, sprung up into a tree; upon which the other, throwing himself flat on the ground, held his breath, and pretended to be dead, remembering to have heard it asserted that this creature will not prey upon a dead carcase. The Bear came up, and after smelling to him for some time, left him, and went on. When he was fairly out of sight and hearing, the hero from the tree calls out—Well, my friend, what said the Bear? He seemed to whisper you very closely. He did so, replied the other, and gave me this good piece of advice: Never to associate with a wretch who in the hour of danger will desert his friend.