title: The Saturday Evening Pearls: A Pearls Before Swine Collection
author:  Stephan Pastis 
description: Stephan Pastis is an attorney turned cartoonist. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and the UCLA School of Law, he worked as a lawyer before trying his hand at cartooning. Pastis lives in the Bay Area with his wife and two children.
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00038.jpeg)
  
  **B** **Y** **A** **ESOP**
  
   **A** **ESOP’S** **F** **ABLES**
  
  THE COCK AND THE PEARL
  
  A cock was once strutting up and down the farmyard among the hens when
  suddenly he espied something shinning amid the straw. ‘Ho! ho!’ quoth he,
  ‘that’s for me,’ and soon rooted it out from beneath the straw. What did it
  turn out to be but a Pearl that by some chance had been lost in the yard? ‘You
  may be a treasure,’ quoth Master Cock, ‘to men that prize you, but for me I
  would rather have a single barley-corn than a peck of pearls.’
  
  Precious things are for those that can prize them.
  
  THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
  
  Once upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a hillside, when, looking
  up, what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to drink a little lower down.
  ‘There’s my supper,’ thought he, ‘if only I can find some excuse to seize it.’
  Then he called out to the Lamb, ‘How dare you muddle the water from which I am
  drinking?’
  
  ‘Nay, master, nay,’ said Lambikin; ‘if the 