A Fox hunted for depredations on poultry was discovered and escaped only after severe blows. He complained to Foxes about the beating he clearly deserved.
It is easy to complain about things done to you but hard to remember those you have done.
Northcote
An active young Fox, who was exceedingly notorious for his depredations on the poultry in his neighbourhood, was once discovered in the fact, and so closely pursued by the enraged peasants, whose property he had invaded, that he did not escape without several severe blows and wounds, of which he made grievous complaint and great outcry when he arrived among his companions, declaring at the same time that he neither knew nor could imagine who they were that had thus cruelly assaulted him.
A grave old Fox who heard him replied, that as he declared he could not conceive who they were who had so roughly treated him, he must of necessity be liable to one of those two odious accusations, either of which would be sufficient to exclude him from being an object of pity: that of having offended so many as to be confounded by the number of his enemies, or that of forgetting those to whom he had done injuries worthy of resentment.
Application
We too often meet with men who very much resemble the Fox in this Fable, who from a violent partiality to themselves and their own interests, can with great facility gloss over their meanest actions, which are soon dismissed from their memories, leaving no more impression than if they had been written on the surface of the water; whilst, on the contrary, the slightest injuries done them, fix in their minds like inscriptions written with a pen of iron on a rock. But our actions in our own view are like the last syllables of words, which every man makes rhyme to what he thinks fit. J. N.
