How many vain people, of moderate easy circumstances, by entertaining the silly ambition of vying with their superiors in station and fortune, get into the direct road to ruin. She strove yet again, and burst herself indeed. Indeed, say they, if you were to burst yourself, you would never be so big. Oh! bigger by a vast deal, say they: and so big? says she, straining herself yet more. What, was it so big? says the old Frog, swelling and blowing up her speckled belly to a great degree. The rest informed their mother, when she came home, what had happened telling her, that the beast which did it, was the hugest creature that they ever saw in their lives. He is mortgaged pretty deep, and pays nobody: but being a privileged person, resides altogether at a private cheap lodging in the city of Wesemister.Īn Ox, grazing in a meadow, chanced to set his foot among a parcel of young Frogs, and trod one of them to death. From that time he grew pensive and before the ensuing winter gave five-and-thirty years purchase for a dozen acres more, to enlarge his gardens, built a couple of exhorbitant green-houses, and a large pavilion at the farther end of a terrace-walk: the bare repairs and superintendances of all which called for the remaining part of his income. All this he could very well bear, and still might have been happy, had it not have been for an unfortunate view which he one day happened to take of my Lord Castlebuilder’s gardens, which consisted of twenty acres, whereas his own were not above twelve. Beside which, he thought himself under a necessity of buying out two or three tenements which stood in his neighbourhood, that he might have elbow-room enough. He gave five thousand pounds for a piece of ground in the country, to set a house upon the building and furniture of which cost fifty thousand more and his gardens were proportionably magnificent.
He had a false taste of happiness and, without the least economy, trusting to the sufficiency of his vast revenue, was resolved to be outdone by nobody in showish grandeur and expensive living. How many vain people, of moderate easy circumstances, burst and come to nothing, by vying with those whose estates are more ample than their own! Sir Changeling Plumstock was possessed of a very considerable estate, devolved to him by the death of an uncle, who had adopted him his heir. Whenever a man endeavours to live equal with one of a greater fortune than himself, he is sure to share a like fate with the Frog in the fable.
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