The Goatherd And The Wild Goats
Aesop Fable: The Goatherd And The Wild Goats
A goatherd, driving his flock from their pasture at eventide,
found some Wild Goats mingled among them, and shut
them up together with his own for the night.
The next day
it snowed very hard, so that he could not take the herd to
their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them
in the fold.
He gave his own goats just sufficient food to
keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in
the hope of enticing them to stay with him and of making
them his own.
When the thaw set in, he led them all out to
feed, and the Wild Goats scampered away as fast as they
could to the mountains.
The Goatherd scolded them for
their ingratitude in leaving him, when during the storm he
had taken more care of them than of his own herd.
One of
them, turning about, said to him: "That is the very reason
why we are so cautious; for if you yesterday treated us
better than the Goats you have had so long, it is plain also
that if others came after us, you would in the same manner
prefer them to ourselves."
Old friends cannot with impunity be sacrificed for new ones.
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