THE LITTLE BOY AND FORTUNE

A little boy wearied with a long journey, lay down overcome with fatigue on the very brink of a deep well. Being within an inch of falling into the water, Dame Fortune, it is said, appeared to him, and waking him from his slumber, thus addressed him: "Little boy, pray wake up: for had you fallen into the well, the blame will be thrown on me, and I shall get an ill name among mortals; for I find that men are sure to blame their calamities to me, however much by their own folly they have really brought them on themselves."

Every one is more or less master

of his own fate.