The Man and His Two Wives

by Aesop

IN THE DAYS when a man was allowed more wives than one, a middle-aged bachelor, who could be called neither young nor old, and whose hair was just beginning to turn gray, fell in love with two women at once, and married them both. The one was young and blooming, and wished her husband to appear as youthful as herself; the other was somewhat more advanced in age, and was anxious that her husband should appear a suitable match for her. So, the young one seized every opportunity of pulling out the good man's gray hairs, the old one was as industrious in plucking out every black hair she could find, till he found that, between one and the other, he had not a hair left.

Moral:
He that submits his principles to the influences and caprices of opposite parties will end in having no principles at all.