Paid in your own coin..

Grandad David often wrote down snippets in his notebook from Aesop’s Fables. This is one of the morals from the story of the Fox and the Stork which must have made an impact on him.

“It is very imprudent as well as inhuman and uncivil to affront anybody; and whoever takes the liberty to exercise his witty talent that way must not think much of it if he be paid back in his own coin.”

I had not heard that expression before….to be paid back in your own coin. This was a fable that I wasn’t familiar with but the story goes like this:

THE Fox invited the Stork to dinner; and, being disposed to divert himself at the expence of his guest, provided nothing for the entertainment, but a soup, in a wide shallow dish. This he could lap up with a great deal of ease, but the Stork, who could but just dip in the point of his bill, was not a bit the better all the while: however, in a few days after, the stork returned the compliment, and invited the Fox; but suffered nothing to be brought to table but some minced meat in a glass jar; the neck of which was so deep and so narrow, that though the Stork with his long bill made a shift to fill his belly, all that the Fox, who was very hungry, could do, was to lick the brims, as the Stork slabbered them with his eating. The fox was heartily vexed at first: but when he came to take his leave, owned ingenuously, that he had been used as he deserved; and that he had no reason to take any treatment ill, of which himself had set the example.

If you ill treat people for your own amusement then you can’t complain if the same treatment is meted out to you. That’s being paid back in your own coin.