Aesop's Fables

#280 The Traveler and Fortune

A Traveler wearied from a long journey lay down, overcome with fatigue, on the very brink of a deep well. Just as he was about to fall into the water, Dame Fortune, it is said, appeared to him and waking him from his slumber thus addressed him: "Good Sir, pray wake up; for if you fall into the well, the blame will be thrown on me, and I shall get an ill-name among mortals; for I find that men are sure to impute their calamities to me, however much by their own folly they have really brought them on themselves."

MORAL: Everyone is more or less master of his own fate.