Fable XLIV The Young Man and the Swallow
A prodigal young spendthrift, who had wasted his whole patrimony in taverns and gaming-houses among lewd, idle company, was taking a melancholy walk near a brook. It was in the month of January, and happened to be one of those warm sunshiny days which sometimes smile upon us even in that wintry season of the year; and to make it the more flattering, a swallow, which had made its appearance by mistake too soon, flew skimming along upon the surface of the water. The giddy youth, observing this, without any further consideration, concluded that summer was now come, and that he should have little or no occasion for clothes, so went and pawned them at the broker’s, and ventured the money for one stake more, among his sharping companions. When this too was gone the same way with the rest, he took another solitary walk in the same place as before. But the weather, being severe and frosty, had made everything look with an aspect very different from what it did before: the brook was quite frozen over, and the poor swallow lay dead upon the bank of it; the very sight of which cooled the young spark’s brains, and coming to a kind of sense of his misery, he reproached the deceased bird as the author of all his misfortunes: Ah, wretch that thou wert! says he, thou hast undone both thyself and me, who was so credulous as to depend upon thee.
Morals
Some will listen to no conviction but what they derive from fatal experience.
Still blind to reason, nature, and his God,
Youth follows pleasure, till he feels the rod
Of sad experience, then bemoans his fate,
Nor sees his folly till it is too late.
Reflection
They who frequent taverns and gaming-houses, and keep bad company, should not wonder if they are reduced, in a very small time, to penury and want. The wretched young fellows who once addict themselves to such a scandalous kind of life, scarce think of, or attend to, any one thing besides. They seem to have nothing else in their heads, but how they may squander what they have got, and where they may get more when that is gone. They do not make the same use of their reason that other people do; but, like the jaundiced eye, view everything in that false light in which their distemper and debauchery represent it. The young man in the Fable gives us a pretty example of this; he sees a swallow in the midst of winter, and instead of being surprised at it, as a very irregular and extraordinary thing, concludes from thence that it is summer, as if he had never thought before about the season. Well, the result of this wise conclusion is of a piece with the conclusion itself; if it is summer, he shall not want so many clothes, therefore he sells them,—for what? For more money to squander away; as if (had his observation been just) summer would have lasted all the year round. But the true result and conclusion of all this is: When both his money and clothes are irrecoverably gone, he comes to his right senses, is ready to perish with hunger, to starve with cold, and to tear his own flesh with remorse and vexation at his former stupidity.