there was a time when a fox would have ventured as far for a bunch of grapes as for a shoulder of mutton, and it was a fox of those days and that palate that stood gaping under a vine and licking his lips at a most delicious cluster of grapes that he had spied out there.

he fetched a hundred and a hundred leaps at it, till, at last, when he was as weary as a dog, and found that there was no good to be done:

"hang 'em," says he, "they are as sour as crabs"; and so away he went, turning off the disappointment with a jest.