Speculations on the Reference

`This "Aesopian fable" has proven to be quite difficult to definitively track down.  There is a fable, by Aesop, titled "The Dog and the Oyster" that might be to what the author is referring, but the fable doesn't seem to mention, or have much to do, with the difference between the Oyster and the Shells.  There's also "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll.  That also, while instructive, doesn't seem to be telling us about the differences between those that get the "fat" and those that are left with the leavings.

A student in Wills and Trusts in Fall, 2000, (Thomas Hart) did a bit of research, and found as follows:

L. Neaves was born 1800, died 1876.  Alice in Wonderland was published in 1865.

Neaves wrote Songs and Verses: Social and Scientific in 1872.  If this is where the Jolly Testator was originally printed, then it could be that he found the fable in Alice in Wonderland.

However,  Neaves was also a greek scholar-- he published The Greek Anthology in 1870.  This could mean that he came across the fable during his own studies.  (He wrote other books on philology and teaching, but his Lecture on Cheap & Accessible Pleasures 1870 seems like it could be kind of interesting.)

Upon posting this question on the "Nota Bene" e-mail list, I received cites to two other, very likely, possiblities.  One, suggested by Paul Ambose, was a fable by La Fontaine.  Another possibility, suggesed by Prof. Bob Binkley, was to one attibuted to Boileau.  Either seems more plausable than the ones above.

Finally, in 2007, Leslie E. Gilbertson, a student in my Wills Class, found what is most likely the fable in question - a different one by La Fontaine. Where La Fontaine might have gotten the idea for the tale is still up in the air.