THE ASS IN FABLE 251 



western countries than ours I don't know, but every 

 Englishman must call himself or somebody else an 

 ass more than once a day. If we had a law or custom 

 which no person would seek to evade, that every time 

 a man used the expression he should pay a fine of 

 one pound sterling into the nearest post office, the 

 money thus accruing to the state would go far towards 

 paying off the National Debt before the people as a 

 whole began to inquire into the cause of the in- 

 creasing want of means; then, having ascertained it, 

 the imbecile habit or convention would automatically 

 come to an end. 



In all literature known to me there is but one story 

 or fable against the ass which gives me a smile; this 

 is Tomas de Iriarte's fable of the ass who, when 

 grazing, came upon a flute dropped by chance 

 or forgotten in the grass. Naturally the animal 

 approached his nose to, and sniffed curiously at it, 

 and in doing so accidentally drew from it a beautiful 

 sound. "Who says I am unable to make music?" 

 cried the animal, delighted at his success. It is a 

 "literary fable," and it is the moral — the fact that 

 a writer's first successful book or essay or poem 

 may be nothing but a fluke, to be followed by miser- 

 able failure or perfect barrenness — that provokes 

 the smile; and a melancholy smile it is, since the 

 truth in most cases may be that it was no fluke, 

 but that the one good work came before some 

 accident or change distuned or ruined the mind 

 that produced it. 



The Iriarte fable reminds me of a better one, one 



