Pagina 86 de 274

Time was when the Frogs were discontented because they had no one

to rule over them: so they sent a deputation to Jupiter to ask

him to give them a King. Jupiter, despising the folly of their

request, cast a log into the pool where they lived, and said that

that should be their King. The Frogs were terrified at first by

the splash, and scuttled away into the deepest parts of the pool;

but by and by, when they saw that the log remained motionless,

one by one they ventured to the surface again, and before long,

growing bolder, they began to feel such contempt for it that they

even took to sitting upon it. Thinking that a King of that sort

was an insult to their dignity, they sent to Jupiter a second

time, and begged him to take away the sluggish King he had given

them, and to give them another and a better one. Jupiter, annoyed

at being pestered in this way, sent a Stork to rule over them,

who no sooner arrived among them than he began to catch and eat

the Frogs as fast as he could.