The farmhouse* in which I grew up had a room we called "The Library" because of its small bookshelf with my father's books -- including selections from Kipling and Twain and Aesop's Fables. I liked to read. And a lot of the morals are now stored in my head. Recently I have found and enjoyed poetry versions of some of these in Jean de La Fontaine's Selected Fables (Dover, 2000) -- see also Project Gutenberg. Here is one about the mathematics of greed ... .
The Hen with the Golden Eggs by Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)
translated by Walter Thornbury
My little story will explain
An olden maxim, which expresses
How Avarice, in search of gain,
May lose the hoard that it possesses.
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