<< Home Page | Oxford (Gibbs) Index

Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)

64. THE DONKEY AND THE MULE
Perry 263 (Chambry 272)

A donkey and a mule were walking along together. When the donkey saw that they were carrying equal loads, he got angry and complained that the mule was awarded a double portion of food even though she carried a load that was no bigger than his own. After they had journeyed a little further down the road, the driver saw that the donkey could not hold up under the weight, so he took part of the donkey's load and placed it on the mule. Later, when the driver saw that the donkey had grown even more tired, he again transferred some of the donkey's load to the mule, and so on. Finally the driver took the entire load and shifted it from the donkey to the mule. At that point the mule glanced over at the donkey and said, 'What do you say now: don't I deserve a double portion of food?'
It is the same when we pass judgment on one another's situations: instead of looking at how things start, we should look instead at how they turn out in the end.


Source: Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.