After learning that the students in my public speaking class at a local college never heard of Aesop's Fables, I found my tattered 1946 edition of Aesop: Five Centuries of Illustrated Fables, selected by John J. McKendry. The book originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, features woodcuts dating as far back as 1484. Dismayed that a 20-year old did not have the vaguest notion of the well-known "The Ant and the Grasshopper fable" I perused the selections when, as if by providential intervention, I came across the fable entitled "The Frogs Who Wanted a King."  There were frogs which were in ditches and ponds at their liberty.  They all together of one assent and of one will made a request to Jupiter that he would give them a king.  And Jupiter began thereof to marvel.  And for their king he cast to them a great piece of wood, which made a great sound and noise in the water, whereof all the frogs had a great dread and feared much.  And after,...(Read Full Post)