EARLY one morning, while the fowls were waiting around the kitchen door for their breakfast, a spring chicken attempted to crow, but succeeded only in uttering a feeble squawk.

A young cock, hearing this, stood up and crowed loud and clear, saying to the other:

“You’d better be still till you can crow like that.”

To which a guinea-hen that was restlessly flitting about replied with a shrill, high voice:

“It was only the spring before last when you did no better yourself!”

“Impossible!” said the cock. “It must be some other chicken you are thinking of.”

“Not so,” replied the guinea. “I remember you ever since you were hatched—while you were a little chick sleeping under your mother’s wing, when you grew bigger and first flew up to the roost, and how like this spring chicken’s your crowing was then, only with this difference: you were so conceited that the whole barnyard was laughing at you. All this is forgotten now, luckily for you. But take my advice: be tender of the failings of others, lest your own be recalled and displayed in full light.”

Let us not refuse to pardon in others what we, through others’ kindness, have been pardoned for ourselves.