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.