A Stag, roused out of his thick cover in the midst of the forest, and driven hard by the hounds, made towards a farm-house, and seeing the door of an Ox-Stall open, entered therein, and hid himself under a heap of straw. One of the Oxen, turning his head about, asked him what he meant by venturing himself in such a place as that was, where he was sure to meet with his doom?—'Ah!' says the Stag, 'if you will but be so good as to favour me with your concealment, I hope I shall do well enough; I intend to make off again the first opportunity.'—Well, he staid there till towards night; in came the ox-man with a bundle of fodder, and never saw him. In short, all the servants of the farm came and went, and not a soul of them smelt any thing of the matter. Nay, the bailiff himself came according to form, and looked in, but walked away no wiser than the rest. Upon this the Stag, ready to jump out of his skin for joy, began to return thanks to the good-natured Oxen, protesting that they were the most obliging people he had ever met with in his life. After he had done his compliments, one of them answered him gravely—'Indeed, we desire nothing more than to have it in our power to contribute to your escape; but there is a certain person, you little think of, who has a hundred eyes; if he should happen to come, I would not give this straw for your life.'—In the interim, home comes the master himself, from a neighbour's, where he had been invited to dinner; and, because he had observed the cattle to look but scurvily of late, he went up to the rack, and asked, why they did not give them more fodder? then, casting his eyes downward,—'Hey-day!' says he, 'why so sparing of your litter? pray scatter a little more here. And these cobwebs—but I have spoke so often, that unless I do it myself—' Thus, as he went on, prying into every thing, he chanced to look where the Stag's horns lay sticking out of the straw; upon which he raised a hue-and-cry, called all his people about him, killed the poor Stag, and made a prize of him.

APPLICATION.

The moral of this fable is, that nobody looks after a man's affairs so well as he himself. Servants, being but hirelings, seldom have the true interest of their master at heart, but let things run on in a negligent constant disorder; and this, generally, not so much for want of capacity as honesty. Their heads are taken up with the cultivation of their own private interest; for the service and promotion of which that of their master is postponed, and often entirely neglected.

Few families are reduced to poverty and distress merely by their own extravagance and indulgence in luxury: the inattention of servants swells every article of expense in domestic oeconomy; and the retinue of great men, instead of exerting their industry to conduce as far as possible to the increase of their master's wealth, commonly exercise no other office than that of locusts and caterpillars, to consume and devour it.