"Run hard. Run hard," said the crowd, and "Let him rest."
"Whatever is the use of it?" said the Hare, and this time he stopped
for good. Some say he slept.
There was desperate excitement for an hour or two, and then the
Tortoise won.
"Run hard. Run hard," shouted his backers. "Hard shell and hard
living: that's what has done it." And then they asked the Tortoise what
his achievement signified, and he went and asked the Turtle. And the
Turtle said, "It is a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness." And
then the Tortoise repeated it to his friends. And all the beasts said
nothing else for years. And even to this day, "a glorious victory for
the forces of swiftness" is a catch-phrase in the house of the snail.
And the reason that this version of the race is not widely known is
that very few of those that witnessed it survived the great forest-fire
that happened shortly after. It came up over the weald by night with
a great wind. The Hare and the Tortoise and a very few of the beasts
saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge of the trees, and
they hurriedly called a meeting to decide what messenger they should
send to warn the beasts in the forest.
They sent the Tortoise.
ALONE THE IMMORTALS
I heard it said that very far away from here, on the wrong side of the
deserts of Cathay and in a country dedicate to winter, are all the years
that are dead.
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