One winter day an olive tree and a fig tree were talking.
“I feel sorry for you,” said the olive tree. “Every year you lose all your leaves and have to shiver through the winter with bare branches. But I stay green and pretty all the year round. Still, I suppose we can't all be good-looking.”
The fig tree was silent. Later that day the weather turned very cold. Great gray clouds filled the sky and it was very still. It began to snow heavily.
All that night it snowed, and all the next day. Fields and hedges were thickly covered and people had to dig paths from their houses to the roadside. The snow settled on the olive tree, drifting in little piles in the leaves, weighing down the branches so that they snapped and fell to the white ground below. The fig tree was luckier. She had no leaves to trap the snow and it drifted harmlessly through the bare twigs.
When the thaw came she was still standing, ready to put out her new spring leaves; but the olive tree lay broken, a twisted jumble of sticks and brown leaves.
一个冬日里，橄榄树和无花果树聊起了天。
“我替你感到难过。”橄榄树说，“你的叶子每年都会掉光，你只能用光秃秃的树枝瑟瑟发抖地熬过冬天。可我却能四季常青，终年美观。不过也是，总不能每棵树都那么好看吧。”
无花果树沉默了。那天晚些时候，天气突然转凉。天空布满了大片的乌云，死气沉沉的，还下起了大雪。
雪下了一整夜，一直下到第二天晚上。田里和篱笆上都被厚厚的大雪覆盖，人们只能从家门口到路边挖出一条条路来。雪落在橄榄树上，在叶子上堆成小堆儿，压弯了树枝。树枝突然折断了，掉在白茫茫的雪地上。无花果树就比较幸运了。她没有叶子，所以截不住雪花。雪从秃枝之间飘落，她毫发未伤。
到大雪融化的时候，无花果树还是一直挺立着，眼看就要吐出春天的新芽。橄榄树却倒在地上，化作缠绕一地的枯枝败叶。
-fig [fɪɡ] n. 无花果(树)
-hedge [hedʒ] n. 树篱
-jumble [ˈdʒʌmbl] n. 杂乱的一堆
关于美丑、优劣、成败的结论不能下得太早。