A hunter, not very bold, was searching for the tracks of a lion.
He asked a man felling oaks in the forest if he had seen any marks of his footsteps or knew where his lair was.
“I will,” said the man, “at once show you the lion himself.”
The hunter, turning very pale and chattering with his teeth from fear, replied,
“No, thank you. I did not ask that; it is his track only I am in search of, not the lion himself.”
Aesop’s fables
Image: A postage stamp issued by the Republic of Niger in 1998 depicting the African lion. Courtesy Animals on Stamps WordPress blog.
This is one among Aesop’s fables, a collection of tales from the Greek story-teller, Aesop. Aesop was a slave in ancient Greece. He was a keen observer of both animals and people. Most of the characters in his stories are animals, some of which take on human characteristic and are personified in ways of speech and emotions. However, the majority of his characters retain their animalistic qualities; tortoise are slow, hares are quick, tigers eat bird, etc. Aesop uses these qualities and natural tendencies of animals to focus on human traits and wisdom. Each fable has an accompanying moral to be learned from the tale.