Lesson:

1. One gloomy day, the clock on a church steeple, looking down on a sundial, said, ‘How stupid it is in you to stand there all the while like a stock!
2. ‘You never tell the hour till a bright sun looks forth from the sky, and gives you leave. I go merrily round, day and night, in summer and winter the same, without asking his leave.
3. ‘I tell the people the time to rise, to go to dinner, and to come to church.
4. ‘Hark! I am going to strike now; one, two, three, four. There it is for you. How silly you look! You can say nothing.’
5. The sun, at that moment, broke forth from behind a cloud, and showed, by the sundial, that the clock was half an hour behind the right time.
6. The boasting clock now held his tongue, and the dial only smiled at his folly.
7. MORAL.—Humble modesty is more often right than a proud and boasting spirit.