A Fox, being caught in a steel trap by his tail, was glad to compound for his escape with the loss of it; but, upon coming abroad into the world, began to be so sensible of the disgrace such a defect would bring upon him, that he almost wished he had died rather than left it behind him. However, to make the best of a bad matter, he formed a project in his head to call an assembly of the rest of the Foxes, and propose it for their imitation, as a fashion which would be very agreeable and becoming. He did so, and made a long harangue upon the unprofitableness of tails in general, and endeavoured chiefly to show the awkwardness and inconvenience of a Fox's tail in particular: adding, that it would be both more graceful and more expeditious to be altogether without them; and that, for his part, what he had only imagined and conjectured before, he now found by experience; for that he never enjoyed himself so well, and found himself so easy as he had done since he cut off his tail. He said no more, but looked about with a brisk air, to see what proselytes he had gained; when a sly old thief in the company, who understood trap, answered him with a leer—'I believe you may have found a conveniency in parting with your tail, and when we are in the same circumstances, perhaps we may do so too.'

APPLICATION.

If men were but generally as prudent as Foxes, they would not suffer so many silly fashions to obtain as are daily brought in vogue, for which scarce any reason can be assigned besides the humour of some conceited vain creature; unless, which is full as bad, they are intended to palliate some defect in the person that introduces them. The petticoat of a whole sex has been sometimes swelled to such a prodigious extent, to screen an enormity of which only one of them has been guilty. And it is no wonder that Alexander the Great could bring a wry-neck into fashion, in a nation of slaves, when we consider what power of this nature some little, insignificant, dapper fellows have had among a free people.