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10/25/2009 3:33 AM

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I have a little book that belonged to Arabelle Stewart from Hoover's Run, Greene County. I know that much because she wrote her name inside the book's cover.

There's no publication date in the book, unless you count the date of the dedication, which is 1722. I don't think this edition is that old, but three schoolgirls provided a date and time when the book was being used.

On a blank page, they wrote the kind of thing young girls did, especially in the Victorian era - silly and romantic, and a little daring.

So the girls from Hoover's Run dared each other, and wrote, "An agreement between we three girls to be married inside 2 yrs. Remember this is Tuesday morn. Just ready to start to school."

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The date was Sept. 12, 1882, they wrote. But they didn't write down all of their names, so we can't find out what happened to them, or which one won the marriage race.

The book was "Aesop's Fables," or somebody's version of them. The author, who signed himself S. Croxall, explained the lessons to be drawn from each of the fables, in case you missed them the first time.

First, there was the well-known "The Fox and the Grapes." "A fox, very hungry, chanced to come into a vineyard where there hung branches of charming ripe grapes; but nailed up to a trellis so high, that he quite tired himself, without being able to reach one of them. At last, "Take them," says he, "they are but green and sour, so I'll even let them alone."

Croxall said, "This fable is a good reprimand to a parcel of vain coxcombs and to grumbling malcontents."

A fable called "The Fatal Marriage" might have kept the girls from Hoover's Run from marrying at all, if they gave it serious thought.

"When the mouse saved the life of a lion, the lion wanted to be generous in thanking the mouse, his little deliverer."

"Name your own terms," said the lion.

"The mouse, presumptuously, demanded his princely daughter, the young lioness, in marriage."

"The lion consented, but during the wedding, the lioness, being very young and careless, a giddy thing as she was, not minding how she walked, by chance set her paw upon her spouse, and crushed the little dear to pieces."

Coxall concluded, "This fable shews us how miserable some people make themselves by a wrong choice."

I don't know whether this story convinced the Hoover's Run girls that they should think twice before keeping their bargain with each other to get married within two years, or not.

But I guess it scared the mice, anyhow.

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