The Horse and His Rider
A soldier took the utmost pains with his charger. As long as the war lasted, he looked upon him as his fellow-helper in all emergencies, and fed him carefully with hay and corn. When the war was over, he only allowed him chaff to eat, made him carry heavy loads of wood, and subjected him to much slavish drudgery and ill-treatment.
War, however, once again proclaimed, and the trumpet summoning him to his standard, the soldier put on his charger the military trappings and mounted in his heavy coat of mail. The horse fell down straightway under the weight, no longer equal to the burden, and said to his master, "You must now go to the war on foot, for you have transformed me from a horse into an ass and how can you expect that I can again turn in a moment from an ass to a horse?"