ANOTHER SIMPLE EXPLANATION 105 
In the old days, a long, long time ago, the males 
and females of all the birds were as beautiful as each 
other, and they were all in love with each other. 
Only the question was which of them were the most 
in love, and, as to that, they often had disputes. ‘‘ We 
love you better than you love us,” said the male birds 
to the females; ‘‘ you love us only for our beauty, 
you do not love us for ourselves, as we love you.” 
“If you think so,” said the female birds (the beauti- 
ful hens), “‘give us your beauty, and you shall find 
that we love you just as well, without it.” But the 
male birds, who were quite content, really, to be loved 
for their beauty, and who did not wish to part with it, 
made haste to change the conversation. “But you 
love us for our beauty,” said the hen birds (for they 
soon got round again to the same subject); ‘it is not 
for ourselves that you love us, but only because we 
are beautiful.” ‘If that is your idea,” said the male 
birds, ‘‘ bestow your beauty upon us, and you shall 
soon be undeceived.”’ Then the female birds, who only 
wished to be loved for themselves and not for what 
they looked like, gave all their beauty to their beauti- 
ful husbands, and remained without any. So now, of 
course, the male birds were twice as beautiful as they 
had been before, whilst the poor hens were not 
beautiful at all, and would even have been quite ugly 
if they had not been birds, for a bird cannot be ugly. 
