A Rabbit was safe from a Fox. He felt different when a Weasel teamed with Fox. Weasel chased him from the hole and Fox snared and shared him. Yum!
Sometimes an alliance is needed to perform a task properly.
JBR Collection
A little timorous Rabbit, who had a safe retreat in his burrow underground, had often perceived an artful Fox lurking near the spot, as if watching for the first opportunity to seize and devour him. However, he lay secure for the present, as the Fox could not enter the small burrow. One day, soon after, the devoted Rabbit saw the Fox in deep confabulation, and seemingly in great amity with the Weasel. This, he conjectured, boded no good to himself, as he found but too soon to be the case; for presently after the Weasel entered his burrow, and attacked him with such fury and fierceness, that he had no other chance of saving his life but by flight. But no sooner bad he darted from his burrow, than he immediately found himself seized on by the Fox; who, together with the Weasel, began to tear him in pieces, when thus the unfortunate victim of their arts, in his dying agonies, uttered his complaint: “I foresaw that my doom was determined on when you two counselled together.”
Northcote
[Note: The Northcote fable is the same fable as in the JBR Collection above. Only the illustrations and Application associated with the fable in the Northcote book are displayed here.]
Application
Friendships among the wicked are nothing less than conspiracies, by which the defenceless and the innocent are sure to suffer; for it is a moral impossibility that any thing like true friendship can subsist in such society; their combinations can only be for the purpose of increasing their power, to do more harm than either could do alone—their bond of union is interest only:—for rogues themselves hate rogues. As there is no truth among them, or word that can be relied upon, of course there can be no confidence, for each dreads that his associate will betray him, whenever it is for his advantage to do so. And as sure as we find bad people in intercourse with each other, we may rely upon it, that some mischief is at hand. The carefulness of the wicked, says the proverb, causes the godly to look about them. J. N.
