A Fable for Little Ones.
ONE fine warm summer’s day, when the sun was brightly shining on the deep blue waves of the restless sea, and turning their crests into glowing silver as they rose and fell on the shingle or washed the green sea-weed up and down on the soft sands, a beautiful dolphin, who looked in the sunlight all green and gold, was sporting far out in mid-ocean, making the waves foam behind him as he darted hither and thither, to catch the flying-fish, who, as soon as he approached them, sprang out of the water and took their flight in the air to escape from his terrible teeth but too often in vain, for he taught them as they came down again.
You see the dolphin was hungry and wanted his dinner, and didn’t much care who suffered so that he had it. Now, although he was so beautiful to look upon, I don’t think you will like him much after knowing that. However, it was his nature, and you know he could not alter his nature any more than we can. Neither you nor I can alter that, and it is so very bad that I am quite sure it is worse than the dolphin’s (Jer. 17:99The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)). Well, after chasing the flying-fish here and there and everywhere, until he had nearly had enough to eat, he found himself close by a great rock that rose high out of the midst of the sea, and there he had endless trouble to catch his prey, for as soon as he got near them they went flying over the rock, and so escaped him.
“What a foolish thing that rock is, to be sure!” he exclaimed, as for the fourth or fifth time he had been disappointed of the hoped-for mouthful. “How utterly useless!”
“You think so, do you?” asked a tiny voice overhead, and looking up the dolphin spied a limpet clinging to the great rock.
“Indeed I do! replied the dolphin, sharply, and his great teeth clashed together as he spoke. “I hate that rock I — who wouldn’t when it comes in the way of his pleasures? Many a fish has escaped me here before today, and it seems to stand there on purpose to annoy me.”
The sun went down in a bank of purple clouds, the wind arose, and presently a storm began. Louder and louder roared the gale, the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, the wild waves, lashed into fury by the wind, rose higher and higher, until they looked like tumbling mountains crested with foam. The dolphin was, as you may suppose, a good swimmer, but the violence of the storm was too much for him. Tossed here and there, now on the top of a great billow, till he seemed to be lifted to heaven, and then hurled into the deep gulf of waters, he was beaten about till he died; but the little limpet, clinging to the great rock, outlived the storm in, perfect safety. In vain did the winds roar and the wild waves beat, they could neither shake the rock nor move the limpet. She was far from being so fine a swimmer as the dolphin, and yet amid all the fury of the storm she took no harm. When the morning dawned and the tempest was past, she saw the dead dolphin floating on the calm sunlit sea. “Ah,” said she, “he called this rock a foolish thing, and worse than useless. But I have found it my salvation.”