Aesop's Fables (Joseph Jacobs)
Jacobs 14. The Mountains in Labour (Perry
520)
One day the Countrymen noticed that the Mountains were in labour; smoke
came out of their summits, the earth was quaking at their feet, trees
were crashing, and huge rocks were tumbling. They felt sure that something
horrible was going to happen. They all gathered together in one place
to see what terrible thing this could be. They waited and they waited,
but nothing came. At last there was a still more violent earthquake, and
a huge gap appeared in the side of the Mountains. They all fell down upon
their knees and waited. At last, and at last, a teeny, tiny mouse poked
its little head and bristles out of the gap and came running down towards
them, and ever after they used to say:
"Much outcry, little outcome."
The
Fables of Aesop, by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by
Richard Heighway (1894). The page images come from Google
Books. The digitized text comes from Project
Gutenberg. You can purchase this inexpensive Dover edition, The
Fables of Aesop by Joseph Jacobs from amazon.com.
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