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Time
Posted by Bling King

Time is the tell tale physics model that allows the distance between to linear points. To tell time is there and does infact exist you must witness the distance between any two points change.If anything changes then time has been a factor. To change time without the physical world is impossible because if nothing changes time can not exist. If I changed time to a quicker pace the physical world would not allow it because time set on a scale like ours is already based on the amount the physical world can react. It is a concrete absolute fundamental that can not vary.If you traveled at the speed of light everything around you would slow cause you are moving at a constant pace with time. Therefore it would seem that less time would pass in actuality you have kept pace with time so everything around you has slowed where as you have actually sped up. The cause of time is based on the fact that to allow something to coexist their has to be some kind of reaction. Therefore time is an absolute must and must exist in every realm throughout the universe. Time and gravity relate by gravity allowing time to basically set its fundamental properties. Everything within gravity works at a certain time within a certain time.
To travel at the speed of light one must become a particle at which one could travel at such a speed. Traveling at the speed of light...Read More
The unexpected
Posted by Bling King


How many people did you expect to expect the unexpected when the unexpected was what was actually what to expect. If you had expected the unexpected you still wouldn't have ever known what was to come because the unexpected was so unexpected you couldn't have ever expected it.
The new world order
Posted by Bling King
 
 
There will be a manifestation of the realm in which we live when the world will become a more positive place to reside. When the world does manifest itself people will look to the person in charge and wonder why he has come into power. There will be only one explanation. There was a ruler of facets whom could look to the universe and see the realm for what it was. A place of deliberate decadence that was brought forth by a being of superior intelligence. In order for that realm to have a continual renewal of corvoidance in which it can be controlled there has to be an element of manipulation. This element can bring about the most evolutionary facets of distinguishable difference from even the norm in which we live. Once the element has been completely manipulated to bring forth a new provision, then the world in which we know will alter to the point of preponderance of persuasion of the person who has set forth the dialogue of distinguishable differences, that will evidently make the mark of the seclusion, from which we all have come to now as the normal normality, we have come to expect. Once this happens we will all see the governance of governance under his control. This is to be a new proponent that will be welcome by some and resented by others. Those who resent this have their reasons as do those who look to the changes...Read More
You can't change the daliptatude of time
Posted by Bling King
 
 
Don't expect the delay of the inevitable to be benounced for certain things can and can't happen. One of the things that can't happen is a positive prospective to come to fruitation with out a guide in which it is to be. You can change the world with a few different dilapatatudes but there is always going to be those certainties which you can't change. Time is one of those.
The vector of the realm of reality
Posted by Bling King

 

 

I don't expect to expect the realm of reality is a realm of reality. There has to be something binding everything that's everything together. I expect that to be a plausible contemplation of something that I could never contemplate due to the fact that is beyond my aptitude to comprehend. I do have an understanding to be certain that is a compilation of the way in which the world in which we live tends to work and with this understanding I can understand the the vector of the summarization of this realm is something like a computer simulation that can or can't be manipulated to a degree of certainty that can only be progressed over time with a correspondence of the factor in which time resides.

Waitng for thee inevatable
Posted by Bling King


Today was a day that started off on accord of all the rest. I woke up in turmoil and expected a vector of completion but I found myself right where I was, waiting for something to come to fruitation. Eventually everything has to come to be the way it was planned. If things do perfectly perplex to the status of completion then all will manifest to my liking.
Thee answers
Posted by Bling King


If you sequester the amount of people who would look to other people for the answer you would understand that there is a single person who would never look to others for the answer to anything. He would look to himself for all the answers to all of everything he wants to know. If you see this person then you will know this person is a person of power and complete control.
Element of completion
Posted by Bling King


Anything that can happen happens because an element of completion that has taken place to bring about the elements complete corvoidance with the realm it resides. Once the fraction of completion is brought into existence and placed in the proper place the fraction brings about the life of something that has to come into effect that will bring in a corvoidance with the realm of all that has happene d including the effect in which all is real and has come to be. Once the fraction joins the other fractions you have a completion and that completion is the effect of fraction of factions coming into place. Those factions are the world in which we see and the events that take place. In order for us to manipulate those factions we have to either add something or take something away. The same thing that has to occur for any change to take place any where in the universe. If the change that takes place is favorable for you to accept then you may want to leave that faction the way it is. If the change is unfavorable you may want to add something or take something away.
War
Posted by Bling King


War is a dependence fortitude of the political whim of those in need of a restructring of the realm in which they reside. If they feel they have gone far enough down the road of contenation that they have no other oppurtunity other than to fight then war is a neccessary mandate. If you decide to go through war and battle the enemy then you need to have a reasonable out come of sucess in mind. Your gains should be great and your casualties manageable. If you feel you can't manage the casualties of your withstanding then you should reconsider this possibile scenario but in a war fought on the gounds of desperation their can be no loss considered to great to withstand.
To war
Posted by Bling King


To war is a clamity but to bring it is to seek a contendation that wouldn't ever suffice unless there was an outcome of fortitude. If the outcome is less than gratifying which it usually is then the war itself had no positive survitude unless graciously determined the outcome of the winner that all is to prosper in prosperity of abundance that wouldn't ever  upset either winners nor losers. That is why all wars are fought to the death or the unconditional surrender of at least one of the participating parties. There will be no conclusion of surrender unless there is a complete abidence of the winners terms. If you wish to war with people you have to understand that this is the outcome that will most likely occur. When I war with an opponant I don't have to kill you as much as I have to persuade you to give up your fight and let myself make the commandments of which to honor. If those commandments aren't honered then we will continue to battle until you have either taken my commandments as law or you are to kill me. I myself won't ever surrender due to the fact to follow the laws of others only brings me to a place of condemnation and immotional turmoil that I myself can't stand to bear. Those that say this is pig headed or stubborn have only to understand that if you give in to the terms of...Read More
To resign
Posted by Bling King
The place is a place of resignation when all sides resigned to become a place of alternative forebearance. This is the place we need to be. No more fighting no more quarling over who's in charge. There has to be one supreme ruler. For this to happen there has to be one person who can steer the others in a single direction.
Times at a stand still
Posted by Bling King
There won't be a moment that I can recall that will bring this period of anxiety to a final end. The truth is that the further along I go the longer it seems I have to wait. Eventually I know it's coming but time is completely at a stand still.
The World Ruler
Posted by Bling King


They will wonder who I am longer after I'm gone but the legend will live on. They will speak of me and ask the person was this person. For he is the person who was the person who was the person. Long live the legend. Long live the forever tale of the one peron who would conquer all and be the one undisputed ruler in all of history. The story will live forever but the man could only live his life as short as that was he definately made his mark. Threaten him if you wish for all will come to know him as their ruler. For the good and the bad their is nobody who could tell him how to live. His life was completely his own to do entirly as he wished. Lets hope he makes some good decisions.
The story Jesus and Judah
Posted by Bling King


If you want to understand the true meaning of life you have to look to the story of Judah and Jesus. Judah was a baptist and Jesus was a jew. Jesus looked at Judah and said how about you baptise me. Judah looked at Jesus and said "for what reason?" Jesus replied back "So I can understand you and your customs." Judah baptised Jesus and said "you are now one of us." Jesus said "thank you Judah but you have always been one of my people and always will be." Judah replied "but I'm not a jew" and Jesus replied "you be anybody you wish to be, Judah and remain in the house of the Lord for all your days". and so he did with his people and their people and all people who would do Gods will. Judah wa suprised at Jesus when Jesus said this and he said "why would you want me" and Jesus said "because a friend of my fathers is a friend of mine" and Judah said "but I don't know your Father" and Jesus said "of course you do" and Judah said "but I have never met him and Jesus said you have Judah you just don't remember". "Where can I find him?" asked Judah and Jesus said "he is among us" and Judah looked around and said "which one? and Jesus replied "well all of them for they where all created in the image of my father." "In...Read More
The rulers of the world
Posted by Bling King
I don't claim to be the irredescent immaculation of the person bonafide to lead the world but I know I can do better than the current regimes. They have done a very poor job at solving the problems of the people. They seemed to be more worried about protecting their own power from diminishing than they do about empowering the people. Don't trust them for if they ever speak it is to condemn the opposition and to try to explain their own motives for their own benefit.




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Jackal, the Dove, and the Panther
Category: Love Letters
Options: Edit Delete Feature Views: 10
There was once a dove who built a nice soft nest as a home for her three
little ones. She was very proud of their beauty, and perhaps talked
about them to her neighbours more than she need have done, till at last
everybody for miles round knew where the three prettiest baby doves in
the whole country-side were to be found.

One day a jackal who was prowling about in search of a dinner came by
chance to the foot of the rock where the dove's nest was hidden away,
and he suddenly bethought himself that if he could get nothing better he
might manage to make a mouthful of one of the young doves. So he shouted
as loud as he could, 'Ohe, ohe, mother dove.'

And the dove replied, trembling with fear, 'What do you want, sir?'

'One of your children,' said he; 'and if you don't throw it to me I will
eat up you and the others as well.'

Now, the dove was nearly driven distracted at the jackal's words; but,
in order to save the lives of the other two, she did at last throw
the little one out of the nest. The jackal ate it up, and went home to
sleep.

Meanwhile the mother dove sat on the edge of her nest, crying bitterly,
when a heron, who was flying slowly past the rock, was filled with pity
for her, and stopped to ask, 'What is the matter, you poor dove?'

And the dove answered, 'A jackal came by, and asked me to give him one
of my little ones, and said that if I refused he would jump on my nest
and eat us all up.'

But the heron replied, 'You should not have believed him. He could never
have jumped so high. He only deceived you because he wanted something
for supper.' And with these words the heron flew off.

He had hardly got out of sight when again the jackal came creeping
slowly round the foot of the rock. And when he saw the dove he cried out
a second time, 'Ohe, ohe, mother dove! give me one of your little ones,
or I will jump on your nest and eat you all up.'

This time the dove knew better, and she answered boldly, 'Indeed, I
shall do nothing of the sort,' though her heart beat wildly with fear
when she saw the jackal preparing for a spring.

However, he only cut himself against the rock, and thought he had better
stick to threats, so he started again with his old cry, 'Mother dove,
mother dove! be quick and give me one of your little ones, or I will eat
you all up.'

But the mother dove only answered as before, 'Indeed, I shall do nothing
of the sort, for I know we are safely out of your reach.'

The jackal felt it was quite hopeless to get what he wanted, and asked,
'Tell me, mother dove, how have you suddenly become so wise?'

'It was the heron who told me,' replied she.

'And which way did he go?' said the jackal.

'Down there among the reeds. You can see him if you look,' said the
dove.

Then the jackal nodded good-bye, and went quickly after the heron. He
soon came up to the great bird, who was standing on a stone on the edge
of the river watching for a nice fat fish. 'Tell me, heron,' said he,
'when the wind blows from that quarter, to which side do you turn?'

'And which side do you turn to?' asked the heron.

The jackal answered, 'I always turn to this side.'

'Then that is the side I turn to,' remarked the heron.

'And when the rain comes from that quarter, which side do you turn to?'

And the heron replied, 'And which side do you turn to?'

'Oh, I always turn to this side,' said the jackal.

'Then that is the side I turn to,' said the heron.

'And when the rain comes straight down, what do you do?'

'What do you do yourself?' asked the heron.

'I do this,' answered the jackal. 'I cover my head with my paws.'

'Then that is what I do,' said the heron. 'I cover my head with my
wings,' and as he spoke he lifted his large wings and spread them
completely over his head.

With one bound the jackal had seized him by the neck, and began to shake
him.

'Oh, have pity, have pity!' cried the heron. 'I never did you any harm.'

'You told the dove how to get the better of me, and I am going to eat
you for it.'

'But if you will let me go,' entreated the heron, 'I will show you the
place where the panther has her lair.'

'Then you had better be quick about it,' said the jackal, holding tight
on to the heron until he had pointed out the panther's den. 'Now you may
go, my friend, for there is plenty of food here for me.'

So the jackal came up to the panther, and asked politely, 'Panther,
would you like me to look after your children while you are out
hunting?'

'I should be very much obliged,' said the panther; 'but be sure you take
care of them. They always cry all the time that I am away.'

So saying she trotted off, and the jackal marched into the cave, where
he found ten little panthers, and instantly ate one up. By-and-bye the
panther returned from hunting, and said to him, 'Jackal, bring out my
little ones for their supper.'

The jackal fetched them out one by one till he had brought out nine, and
he took the last one and brought it out again, so the whole ten seemed
to be there, and the panther was quite satisfied.

Next day she went again to the chase, and the jackal ate up another
little panther, so now there were only eight. In the evening, when she
came back, the panther said, 'Jackal, bring out my little ones!'

And the jackal brought out first one and then another, and the last one
he brought out three times, so that the whole ten seemed to be there.

The following day the same thing happened, and the next and the next and
the next, till at length there was not even one left, and the rest of
the day the jackal busied himself with digging a large hole at the back
of the den.

That night, when the panther returned from hunting, she said to him as
usual, 'Jackal, bring out my little ones.'

But the jackal replied: 'Bring out your little ones, indeed! Why, you
know as well as I do that you have eaten them all up.'

Of course the panther had not the least idea what the jackal meant by
this, and only repeated, 'Jackal, bring out my children.' As she got
no answer she entered the cave, but found no jackal, for he had crawled
through the hole he had made and escaped. And, what was worse, she did
not find the little ones either.

Now the panther was not going to let the jackal get off like that, and
set off at a trot to catch him. The jackal, however, had got a good
start, and he reached a place where a swarm of bees deposited their
honey in the cleft of a rock. Then he stood still and waited till the
panther came up to him: 'Jackal, where are my little ones?' she asked.

And the jackal answered: 'They are up there. It is where I keep school.'

The panther looked about, and then inquired, 'But where? I see nothing
of them.'

'Come a little this way,' said the jackal, 'and you will hear how
beautifully they sing.'

So the panther drew near the cleft of the rock.

'Don't you hear them?' said the jackal; 'they are in there,' and slipped
away while the panther was listening to the song of the children.

She was still standing in the same place when a baboon went by. 'What
are you doing there, panther?'

'I am listening to my children singing. It is here that the jackal keeps
his school.'

Then the baboon seized a stick, and poked it in the cleft of the rock,
exclaiming, 'Well, then, I should like to see your children!'

The bees flew out in a huge swarm, and made furiously for the panther,
whom they attacked on all sides, while the baboon soon climbed up out of
the way, crying, as he perched himself on the branch of a tree, 'I wish
you joy of your children!' while from afar the jackal's voice was heard
exclaiming: 'Sting, her well! don't let her go!'

The panther galloped away as if she was mad, and flung herself into the
nearest lake, but every time she raised her head, the bees stung her
afresh so at last the poor beast was drowned altogether.




The Little Hare

Contes populaires des Bassoutos. Recueillis et traduits par E. Jacottet.
Paris: Leroux, Editeur.


A long, long way off, in a land where water is very scarce, there lived
a man and his wife and several children. One day the wife said to her
husband, 'I am pining to have the liver of a nyamatsane for my dinner.
If you love me as much as you say you do, you will go out and hunt for
a nyamatsane, and will kill it and get its liver. If not, I shall know
that your love is not worth having.'

'Bake some bread,' was all her husband answered, 'then take the crust
and put it in this little bag.'

The wife did as she was told, and when she had finished she said to her
husband, 'The bag is all ready and quite full.'

'Very well,' said he, 'and now good-bye; I am going after the
nyamatsane.'

But the nyamatsane was not so easy to find as the woman had hoped. The
husband walked on and on and on without ever seeing one, and every now
and then he felt so hungry that he was obl
Troll's Daughter
Category: Love Letters
Options: Edit Delete Feature Views: 11
There was once a lad who went to look for a place. As he went along he
met a man, who asked him where he was going. He told him his errand, and
the stranger said, 'Then you can serve me; I am just in want of a lad
like you, and I will give you good wages--a bushel of money the first
year, two the second year, and three the third year, for you must serve
me three years, and obey me in everything, however strange it seems to
you. You need not be afraid of taking service with me, for there is no
danger in it if you only know how to obey.'

The bargain was made, and the lad went home with the man to whom he had
engaged himself. It was a strange place indeed, for he lived in a bank
in the middle of the wild forest, and the lad saw there no other person
than his master. The latter was a great troll, and had marvellous power
over both men and beasts.

Next day the lad had to begin his service. The first thing that the
troll set him to was to feed all the wild animals from the forest. These
the troll had tied up, and there were both wolves and bears, deer and
hares, which the troll had gathered in the stalls and folds in his
stable down beneath the ground, and that stable was a mile long. The
boy, however, accomplished all this work on that day, and the troll
praised him and said that it was very well done.

Next morning the troll said to him, 'To-day the animals are not to be
fed; they don't get the like of that every day. You shall have leave to
play about for a little, until they are to be fed again.'

Then the troll said some words to him which he did not understand, and
with that the lad turned into a hare, and ran out into the wood. He got
plenty to run for, too, for all the hunters aimed at him, and tried to
shoot him, and the dogs barked and ran after him wherever they got wind
of him. He was the only animal that was left in the wood now, for the
troll had tied up all the others, and every hunter in the whole country
was eager to knock him over. But in this they met with no success; there
was no dog that could overtake him, and no marksman that could hit him.
They shot and shot at him, and he ran and ran. It was an unquiet life,
but in the long run he got used to it, when he saw that there was no
danger in it, and it even amused him to befool all the hunters and dogs
that were so eager after him.

Thus a whole year passed, and when it was over the troll called him
home, for he was now in his power like all the other animals. The troll
then said some words to him which he did not understand, and the hare
immediately became a human being again. 'Well, how do you like to serve
me?' said the troll, 'and how do you like being a hare?'

The lad replied that he liked it very well; he had never been able to go
over the ground so quickly before. The troll then showed him the bushel
of money that he had already earned, and the lad was well pleased to
serve him for another year.

The first day of the second year the boy had the same work to do as on
the previous one--namely, to feed all the wild animals in the troll's
stable. When he had done this the troll again said some words to him,
and with that he became a raven, and flew high up into the air. This was
delightful, the lad thought; he could go even faster now than when he
was a hare, and the dogs could not come after him here. This was a great
delight to him, but he soon found out that he was not to be left quite
at peace, for all the marksmen and hunters who saw him aimed at him and
fired away, for they had no other birds to shoot at than himself, as the
troll had tied up all the others.

This, however, he also got used to, when he saw that they could never
hit him, and in this way he flew about all that year, until the troll
called him home again, said some strange words to him, and gave him
his human shape again. 'Well, how did you like being a raven?' said the
troll.

'I liked it very well,' said the lad, 'for never in all my days have I
been able to rise so high.' The troll then showed him the two bushels
of money which he had earned that year, and the lad was well content to
remain in his service for another year.

Next day he got his old task of feeding all the wild beasts. When this
was done the troll again said some words to him, and at these he turned
into a fish, and sprang into the river. He swam up and he swam down, and
thought it was pleasant to let himself drive with the stream. In this
way he came right out into the sea, and swam further and further out. At
last he came to a glass palace, which stood at the bottom of the sea. He
could see into all the rooms and halls, where everything was very grand;
all the furniture was of white ivory, inlaid with gold and pearl. There
were soft rugs and cushions of all the colours of the rainbow, and
beautiful carpets that looked like the finest moss, and flowers and
trees with curiously crooked branches, both green and yellow, white and
red, and there were also little fountains which sprang up from the most
beautiful snail-shells, and fell into bright mussel-shells, and at the
same time made a most delightful music, which filled the whole palace.

The most beautiful thing of all, however, was a young girl who went
about there, all alone. She went about from one room to another, but did
not seem to be happy with all the grandeur she had about her. She walked
in solitude and melancholy, and never even thought of looking at her
own image in the polished glass walls that were on every side of her,
although she was the prettiest creature anyone could wish to see. The
lad thought so too while he swam round the palace and peeped in from
every side.

'Here, indeed, it would be better to be a man than such a poor dumb fish
as I am now,' said he to himself; 'if I could only remember the words
that the troll says when he changes my shape, then perhaps I could help
myself to become a man again.' He swam and he pondered and he thought
over this until he remembered the sound of what the troll said, and then
he tried to say it himself. In a moment he stood in human form at the
bottom of the sea.

He made haste then to enter the glass palace, and went up to the young
girl and spoke to her.

At first he nearly frightened the life out of her, but he talked to
her so kindly and explained how he had come down there that she soon
recovered from her alarm, and was very pleased to have some company to
relieve the terrible solitude that she lived in. Time passed so quickly
for both of them that the youth (for now he was quite a young man, and
no more a lad) forgot altogether how long he had been there.

One day the girl said to him that now it was close on the time when he
must become a fish again--the troll would soon call him home, and he
would have to go, but before that he must put on the shape of the fish,
otherwise he could not pass through the sea alive. Before this, while he
was staying down there, she had told him that she was a daughter of the
same troll whom the youth served, and he had shut her up there to keep
her away from everyone. She had now devised a plan by which they could
perhaps succeed in getting to see each other again, and spending the
rest of their lives together. But there was much to attend to, and he
must give careful heed to all that she told him.

She told him then that all the kings in the country round about were
in debt to her father the troll, and the king of a certain kingdom,
the name of which she told him, was the first who had to pay, and if he
could not do so at the time appointed he would lose his head. 'And he
cannot pay,' said she; 'I know that for certain. Now you must, first of
all, give up your service with my father; the three years are past,
and you are at liberty to go. You will go off with your six bushels
of money, to the kingdom that I have told you of, and there enter the
service of the king. When the time comes near for his debt becoming due
you will be able to notice by his manner that he is ill at ease. You
shall then say to him that you know well enough what it is that is
weighing upon him--that it is the debt which he owes to the troll and
cannot pay, but that you can lend him the money. The amount is six
bushels--just what you have. You shall, however, only lend them to
him on condition that you may accompany him when he goes to make the
payment, and that you then have permission to run before him as a fool.
When you arrive at the troll's abode, you must perform all kinds of
foolish tricks, and see that you break a whole lot of his windows, and
do all other damage that you can. My father will then get very angry,
and as the king must answer for what his fool does he will sentence him,
even although he has paid his debt, either to answer three questions or
to lose his life. The first question my father will ask will be, "Where
is my daughter?" Then you shall step forward and answer "She is at the
bottom of the sea." He will then ask you whether you can recognise her,
and to this you will answer "Yes." Then he will bring forward a whole
troop of women, and cause them to pass before you, in order that you may
pick out the one that you take for his daughter. You will not be able
to recognise me at all, and therefore I will catch hold of you as I go
past, so that you can notice it, and you must then make haste to catch
me and hold me fast. You have then answered his first question. His next
question will be, "Where is my heart?" You shall then step forward again
and answer, "It is in a fish." "Do you know that fish?" he will say,
and you will again answer "Yes." He will then cause all kinds of fish
to come before you, and you shall choose between them. I shall take good
care to keep by your side, and when the right fish comes I will give you
a little push, and with that you will seize the fish and cut it up. Then
all will be over with the troll; he will ask no more questions, and we
shall be free to wed.'

When the youth had got all these directions as to what he had to do when
he got ashore again the next thing was to remember the words which the
troll said when he changed him from a human being to an animal; but
these he had forgotten, and the girl did not know them either. He went
about all day in despair, and thought and thought, but he could not
remember what they sounded like. During the night he could not sleep,
until towards morning he fell into a slumber, and all at once it flashed
upon him what the troll used to say. He made haste to repeat the words,
and at the same moment he became a fish again and slipped out into the
sea. Immediately after this he was called upon, and swam through the sea
up the river to where the troll stood on the bank and restored him to
human shape with the same words as before.

'Well, how do you like to be a fish?' asked the troll.

It was what he had liked best of all, said the youth, and that was no
lie, as everybody can guess.

The troll then showed him the three bushels of money which he had earned
during the past year; they stood beside the other three, and all the six
now belonged to him.

'Perhaps you will serve me for another year yet,' said the troll, 'and
you will get six bushels of money for it; that makes twelve in all, and
that is a pretty penny.'

'No,' said the youth; he thought he had done enough, and was anxious to
go to some other place to serve, and learn other people's ways; but he
would, perhaps, come back to the troll some other time.

The troll said that he would always be welcome; he had served him
faithfully for the three years they had agreed upon, and he could make
no objections to his leaving now.

The youth then got his six bushels of money, and with these he betook
himself straight to the kingdom which his sweetheart had told him of.
He got his money buried in a lonely spot close to the king's palace, and
then went in there and asked to be taken into service. He obtained his
request, and was taken on as stableman, to tend the king's horses.

Some time passed, and he noticed how the king always went about
sorrowing and grieving, and was never glad or happy. One day the king
came into the stable, where there was no one present except the youth,
who said straight out to him that, with his majesty's permission, he
wished to ask him why he was so sorrowful.

'It's of no use speaking about that,' said the king; 'you cannot help
me, at any rate.'

'You don't know about that,' said the youth; ' I know well enough what
it is that lies so heavy on your mind, and I know also of a plan to get
the money paid.'

This was quite another case, and the king had more talk with the
stableman, who said that he could easily lend the king the six bushels
of money, but would only do it on condition that he should be allowed to
accompany the king when he went to pay the debt, and that he should
then be dressed like the king's court fool, and run before him. He would
cause some trouble, for which the king would be severely spoken to, but
he would answer for it that no harm would befall him.

The king gladly agreed to all that the youth proposed, and it was now
high time for them to set out.

When they came to the troll's dwelling it was no longer in the bank, but
on the top of this there stood a large castle which the youth had never
seen before. The troll could, in fact, make it visible or invisible,
just as he pleased, and, knowing as much as he did of the troll's magic
arts, the youth was not at all surprised at this.

When they came near to this castle, which looked as if it was of pure
glass, the youth ran on in front as the king's fool. Heran sometimes
facing forwards, sometimes backwards, stood sometimes on his head, and
sometimes on his feet, and he dashed in pieces so many of the troll's
big glass windows and doors that it was something awful to see, and
overturned everything he could, and made a fearful disturbance.

The troll came rushing out, and was so angry and furious, and abused the
king with all his might for bringing such a wretched fool with him, as
he was sure that he could not pay the least bit of all the damage that
had been done when he could not even pay off his old debt.

The fool, however, spoke up, and said that he could do so quite easily,
and the king then came forward with the six bushels of money which the
youth had lent him. They were measured and found to be correct. This the
troll had not reckoned on, but he could make no objection against it.
The old debt was honestly paid, and the king got his bond back again.

But there still remained all the damage that had been done that day, and
the king had nothing with which to pay for this. The troll, therefore,
sentenced the king, either to answer three questions that he would put
to him, or have his head taken off, as was agreed on in the old bond.

There was nothing else to be done than to try to answer the troll's
riddles. The fool then stationed himself just by the king's side while
the troll came forward with his questions. He first asked, 'Where is my
daughter?'

The fool spoke up and said, 'She is at the bottom of the sea.'

'How do you know that?' said the troll.

'The little fish saw it,' said the fool.

'Would you know her?' said the troll.

'Yes, bring her forward,' said the fool.

The troll made a whole crowd of women go past them, one after the other,
but all these were nothing but shadows and deceptions. Amongst the very
last was the troll's real daughter, who pinched the fool as she went
past him to make him aware of her presence. He thereupon caught her
round the waist and held her fast, and the troll had to admit that his
first riddle was solved.

Then the troll asked again: 'Where is my heart?'

'It is in a fish,' said the fool.

'Would you know that fish?' said the troll.

'Yes, bring it forward,' said the fool.

Then all the fishes came swimming past them, and meanwhile the troll's
daughter stood just by the youth's side. When at last the right fish
came swimming along she gave him a nudge, and he seized it at once,
drove his knife into it, and split it up, took the heart out of it, and
cut it through the middle.

At the same moment the troll fell dead and turned into pieces of flint.
With that a,ll the bonds that the troll had bound were broken; all the
wild beasts and birds which he had caught and hid under the ground were
free now, and dispersed themselves in the woods and in the air.

The youth and his sweetheart entered the castle, which was now theirs,
and held their wedding; and all the kings roundabout, who had been
in the troll's debt, and were now out of it, came to the wedding, and
saluted the youth as their emperor, and he ruled over them all, and kept
peace between them, and lived in his castle with his beautiful empress
in great joy and magnificence. And if they have not died since they are
living there to this day.

White Dove
Category: Love Letters
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A king had two sons. They were a pair of reckless fellows, who always
had something foolish to do. One day they rowed out alone on the sea in
a little boat. It was beautiful weather when they set out, but as soon
as they had got some distance from the shore there arose a terrific
storm. The oars went overboard at once, and the little boat was tossed
about on the rolling billows like a nut-shell. The princes had to hold
fast by the seats to keep from being thrown out of the boat.

In the midst of all this they met a wonderful vessel--it was a
dough-trough, in which there sat an old woman. She called to them, and
said that they could still get to shore alive if they would promise her
the son that was next to come to their mother the queen.

'We can't do that,' shouted the princes; 'he doesn't belong to us so we
can't give him away.'

'Then you can rot at the bottom of the sea, both of you,' said the old
woman; 'and perhaps it may be the case that your mother would rather
keep the two sons she has than the one she hasn't got yet.'

Then she rowed away in her dough-trough, while the storm howled still
louder than before, and the water dashed over their boat until it was
almost sinking. Then the princes thought that there was something in
what the old woman had said about their mother, and being, of course,
eager to save their lives, they shouted to her, and promised that she
should have their brother if she would deliver them from this danger. As
soon as they had done so the storm ceased and the waves fell. The boat
drove ashore below their father's castle, and both princes were received
with open arms by their father and mother, who had suffered great
anxiety for them.

The two brothers said nothing about what they had promised, neither at
that time nor later on when the queen's third son came, a beautiful boy,
whom she loved more than anything else in the world. He was brought up
and educated in his father's house until he was full grown, and still
his brothers had never seen or heard anything about the witch to whom
they had promised him before he was born.

It happened one evening that there arose a raging storm, with mist and
darkness. It howled and roared around the king's palace, and in the
midst of it there came a loud knock on the door of the hall where the
youngest prince was. He went to the door and found there an old woman
with a dough- trough on her back, who said to him that he must go with
her at once; his brothers had promised him to her if she would save
their lives.

'Yes,' said he; 'if you saved my brothers' lives, and they promised me
to you, then I will go with you.'

They therefore went down to the beach together, where he had to take his
seat in the trough, along with the witch, who sailed away with him, over
the sea, home to her dwelling.

The prince was now in the witch's power, and in her service. The first
thing she set him to was to pick feathers. 'The heap of feathers that
you see here,' said she, 'you must get finished before I come home in
the evening, otherwise you shall be set to harder work.' He started
to the feathers, and picked and picked until there was only a single
feather left that had not passed through his hands. But then there came
a whirlwind and sent all the feathers flying, and swept them along the
floor into a heap, where they lay as if they were trampled together.
He had now to begin all his work over again, but by this time it only
wanted an hour of evening, when the witch was to be expected home, and
he easily saw that it was impossible for him to be finished by that
time.

Then he heard something tapping at the window pane, and a thin voice
said, 'Let me in, and I will help you.' It was a white dove, which sat
outside the window, and was pecking at it with its beak. He opened the
window, and the dove came in and set to work at once, and picked all
the feathers out of the heap with its beak. Before the hour was past the
feathers were all nicely arranged: the dove flew out at the window, and
at, the same moment the witch came in at the door.

'Well, well,' said she, 'it was more than I would have expected of you
to get all the feathers put in order so nicely. However, such a prince
might be expected to have neat fingers.'

Next morning the witch said to the prince, 'To-day you shall have some
easy work to do. Outside the door I have some firewood lying; you must
split that for me into little bits that I can kindle the fire with. That
will soon be done, but you must be finished before I come home.'

The prince got a little axe and set to work at once. He split and clove
away, and thought that he was getting on fast; but the day wore on until
it was long past midday, and he was still very far from having finished.
He thought, in fact, that the pile of wood rather grew bigger than
smaller, in spite of what he took off it; so he let his hands fall by
his side, and dried the sweat from his forehead, and was ill at ease,
for he knew that it would be bad for him if he was not finished with the
work before the witch came home.

Then the white dove came flying and settled down on the pile of wood,
and cooed and said, 'Shall I help you?'

'Yes,' said the prince, 'many thanks for your help yesterday, and for
what you offer to-day.' Thereupon the little dove seized one piece of
wood after another and split it with its beak. The prince could not take
away the wood as quickly as the dove could split it, and in a short time
it was all cleft into little sticks.

The dove then flew up on his shoulder and sat there and the prince
thanked it, and stroked and caressed its white feathers, and kissed
its little red beak. With that it was a dove no longer, but a beautiful
young maiden, who stood by his side. She told him then that she was a
princess whom the witch had stolen, and had changed to this shape,
but with his kiss she had got her human form again; and if he would be
faithful to her, and take her to wife, she could free them both from the
witch's power.

The prince was quite captivated by the beautiful princess, and was quite
willing to do anything whatsoever to get her for himself.

She then said to him, 'When the witch comes home you must ask her to
grant you a wish, when you have accomplished so well all that she has
demanded of you. When she agrees to this you must ask her straight out
for the princess that she has flying about as a white dove. But just now
you must take a red silk thread and tie it round my little finger, so
that you may be able to recognise me again, into whatever shape she
turns me.'

The prince made haste to get the silk thread tied round her little white
finger; at the same moment the princess became a dove again and flew
away, and immediately after that the old witch came home with her
dough-trough on he back.

'Well,' said she, 'I must say that you are clever at your work, and it
is something, too, that such princely hands are not accustomed to.'

'Since you are so well pleased with my work, said the prince, 'you
will, no doubt, be willing to give me a little pleasure too, and give me
something that I have taken a fancy to.'

'Oh yes, indeed,' said the old woman; 'what is it that you want?'

'I want the princess here who is in the shape of a white dove,' said the
prince.

'What nonsense!' said the witch. 'Why should you imagine that there are
princesses here flying about in the shape of white doves? But if you
will have a princess, you can get one such as we have them.' She then
came to him, dragging a shaggy little grey ass with long ears. 'Will you
have this?' said she; 'you can't get any other princess!'

The prince used his eyes and saw the red silk thread on one of the ass's
hoofs, so he said, 'Yes, just let me have it.'

'What will you do with it?' asked the witch.

'I will ride on it,' said the prince; but with that the witch dragged
it away again, and came back with an old, wrinkled, toothless hag, whose
hands trembled with age. 'You can have no other princess,' said she.
'Will you have her?'

'Yes, I will,' said the prince, for he saw the red silk thread on the
old woman's finger.

At this the witch became so furious that she danced about and knocked
everything to pieces that she could lay her hands upon, so that the
splinters flew about the ears of the prince and princess, who now stood
there in her own beautiful shape.

Then their marriage had to be celebrated, for the witch had to stick
to what she had promised, and he must get the princess whatever might
happen afterwards.

The princess now said to him, 'At the marriage feast you may eat what
you please, but you must not drink anything whatever, for if you do that
you will forget me.'

This, however, the prince forgot on the wedding day, and stretched out
his hand and took a cup of wine; but the princess was keeping watch over
him, and gave him a push with her elbow, so that the wine flew over the
table- cloth.

Then the witch got up and laid about her among the plates and dishes, so
that the pieces flew about their ears, just as she had done when she was
cheated the first time.

They were then taken to the bridal chamber, and the door was shut. Then
the princess said, 'Now the witch has kept her promise, but she will do
no more if she can help it, so we must fly immediately. I shall lay two
pieces of wood in the bed to answer for us when the witch speaks to us.
You can take the flower-pot and the glass of water that stands in the
window, and we must slip out by that and get away.'

No sooner said than done. They hurried off out into the dark night, the
princess leading, because she knew the way, having spied it out while
she flew about as a dove.

At midnight the witch came to the door of the room and called in to
them, and the two pieces of wood answered her, so that she believed they
were there, and went away again. Before daybreak she was at the door
again and called to them, and again the pieces of wood answered for
them. She thus thought that she had them, and when the sun rose the
bridal night was past: she had then kept her promise, and could vent her
anger and revenge on both of them. With the first sunbeam she broke into
the room, but there she found no prince and no princess--nothing but the
two pieces of firewood, which lay in the bed, and stared, and spoke not
a word. These she threw on the floor, so that they were splintered into
a thousand pieces, and off she hastened after the fugitives.

With the first sunbeam the princess said to the prince, 'Look round; do
you see anything behind us?'

'Yes, I see a dark cloud, far away,' said he.

'Then throw the flower-pot over your head,' said she. When this was done
there was a large thick forest behind them.

When the witch came to the forest she could not get through it until she
went home and brought her axe to cut a path.

A little after this the princess said again to the prince, 'Look round;
do you see anything behind us?'

'Yes,' said the prince, 'the big black cloud is there again.'

'Then throw the glass of water over your head,' said she.

When he had done this there was a great lake behind them, and this
the witch could not cross until she ran home again and brought her
dough-trough.

Meanwhile the fugitives had reached the castle which was the prince's
home. They climbed over the garden wall, ran across the garden, and
crept in at an open window. By this time the witch was just at their
heels, but the princess stood in the window and blew upon the witch;
hundreds of white doves flew out of her mouth, fluttered and flapped
around the witch's head until she grew so angry that she turned into
flint, and there she stands to this day, in the shape of a large flint
stone, outside the window.

Within the castle there was great rejoicing over the prince and his
bride. His two elder brothers came and knelt before him and confessed
what they had done, and said that he alone should inherit the kingdom,
and they would always be his faithful subjects.
Golden Lion
Category: Love Letters
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There was once a rich merchant who had three sons, and when they were
grown up the eldest said to him, 'Father, I wish to travel and see the
world. I pray you let me.'

So the father ordered a beautiful ship to be fitted up, and the young
man sailed away in it. After some weeks the vessel cast anchor before a
large town, and the merchant's son went on shore.

The first thing he saw was a large notice written on a board saying that
if any man could find the king's daughter within eight days he should
have her to wife, but that if he tried and failed his head must be the
forfeit.

'Well,' thought the youth as he read this proclamation, 'that ought not
to be a very difficult matter;' and he asked an audience of the king,
and told him that he wished to seek for the princess.

'Certainly,' replied the king. 'You have the whole palace to search in;
but remember, if you fail it will cost you your head.'

So saying, he commanded the doors to be thrown open, and food and drink
to be set before the young man, who, after he had eaten, began to look
for the princess. But though he visited every corner and chest and
cupboard, she was not in any of them, and after eight days he gave it up
and his head was cut off.

All this time his father and brothers had had no news of him, and were
very anxious. At last the second son could bear it no longer, and said,
'Dear father, give me, I pray you, a large ship and some money, and let
me go and seek for my brother.'

So another ship was fitted out, and the young man sailed away, and was
blown by the wind into the same harbour where his brother had landed.

Now when he saw the first ship lying at anchor his heart beat high,
and he said to himself, 'My brother cannot surely be far off,' and he
ordered a boat and was put on shore.

As he jumped on to the pier his eye caught the notice about the
princess, and he thought, 'He has undertaken to find her, and has
certainly lost his head. I must try myself, and seek him as well as her.
It cannot be such a very difficult matter.' But he fared no better than
his brother, and in eight days his head was cut off.

So now there was only the youngest at home, and when the other two never
came he also begged for a ship that he might go in search of his lost
brothers. And when the vessel started a high wind arose, and blew him
straight to the harbour where the notice was set.

'Oho!' said he, as he read, 'whoever can find the king's daughter shall
have her to wife. It is quite clear now what has befallen my brothers.
But in spite of that I think I must try my luck,' and he took the road
to the castle.

On the way he met an old woman, who stopped and begged.

'Leave me in peace, old woman,' replied he.


'Oh, do not send me away empty,' she said. 'You are such a handsome
young man you will surely not refuse an old woman a few pence.'

'I tell you, old woman, leave me alone.'

'You are in some trouble?' she asked. 'Tell me what it is, and perhaps I
can help you.'

Then he told her how he had set his heart on finding the king's
daughter.

'I can easily manage that for you as long as you have enough money.'

'Oh, as to that, I have plenty,' answered he.

'Well, you must take it to a goldsmith and get him to make it into a
golden lion, with eyes of crystal; and inside it must have something
that will enable it to play tunes. When it is ready bring it to me.'

The young man did as he was bid, and when the lion was made the old
woman hid the youth in it, and brought it to the king, who was so
delighted with it that he wanted to buy it. But she replied, 'It does
not belong to me, and my master will not part from it at any price.'

'At any rate, leave it with me for a few days,' said he; 'I should like
to show it to my daughter.'

'Yes, I can do that,' answered the old woman; 'but to-morrow I must have
it back again. And she went away.

The king watched her till she was quite out of sight, so as to make sure
that she was not spying upon him; then he took the golden lion into his
room and lifted some loose boards from the floor. Below the floor there
was a staircase, which he went down till he reached a door at the
foot. This he unlocked, and found himself in a narrow passage closed by
another door, which he also opened. The young man, hidden in the golden
lion, kept count of everything, and marked that there were in all seven
doors. After they had all been unlocked the king entered a lovely hall,
where the princess was amusing herself with eleven friends. All twelve
girls wore the same clothes, and were as like each other as two peas.

'What bad luck!' thought the youth. 'Even supposing that I managed to
find my way here again, I don't see how I could ever tell which was the
princess.'

And he stared hard at the princess as she clapped her hands with joy and
ran up to them, crying, ' Oh, do let us keep that delicious beast for
to-night; it will make such a nice plaything.'

The king did not stay long, and when he left he handed over the lion to
the maidens, who amused themselves with it for some time, till they got
sleepy, and thought it was time to go to bed. But the princess took the
lion into her own room and laid it on the floor.


She was just beginning to doze when she heard a voice quite close to
her, which made her jump. 'O lovely princess, if you only knew what
I have gone through to find you!' The princess jumped out of bed
screaming, 'The lion! the lion!' but her friends thought it was a
nightmare, and did not trouble themselves to get up.

'O lovely úprincess!' continued the voice, 'fear nothing! I am the son
of a rich merchant, and desire above all things to have you for my wife.
And in order to get to you I have hidden myself in this golden lion.'

'What use is that?' she asked. 'For if you cannot pick me out from among
my companions you will still lose your head.'

'I look to you to help me,' he said. 'I have done so much for you that
you might do this one thing for me.'

'Then listen to me. On the eighth day I will tie a white sash round my
waist, and by that you will know me.'

The next morning the king came very early to fetch the lion, as the old
woman was already at the palace asking for it. When they were safe from
view she let the young man out, and he returned to the king and told him
that he wished to find the princess.

'Very good,' said the king, who by this time was almost tired of
repeating the same words; 'but if you fail your head will be the
forfeit.'

So the youth remained quietly in the castle, eating and looking at all
the beautiful things around him, and every now and then pretending to
be searching busily in all the closets and corners. On the eighth day he
entered the room where the king was sitting. 'Take up the floor in this
place,' he said. The king gave a cry, but stopped himself, and asked,
'What do you want the floor up for? There is nothing there.'

But as all his courtiers were watching him he did not like to make any
more objections, and ordered the floor to be taken up, as the young man
desired. The youth then want straight down the staircase till he reached
the door; then he turned and demanded that the key should be brought.
So the king was forced to unlock the door, and the next and the next and
the next, till all seven were open, and they entered into the hall where
the twelve maidens were standing all in a row, so like that none might
tell them apart. But as he looked one of them silently drew a white sash
from her pocket and slipped it round her waist, and the young man sprang
to her and said, 'This is the princess, and I claim her for my wife.'
And the king owned himself beaten, and commanded that the wedding feast
should be held.

After eight days the bridal pair said farewell to the king, and set
sail for the youth's own country, taking with them a whole shipload of
treasures as the princess's dowry. But they did not forget the old woman
who had brought about all their happiness, and they gave her enough
money to make her comfortable to the end of her days.
Master
Category: Love Letters
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There was once a man who had a son who was very clever at reading, and
took great delight in it. He went out into the world to seek service
somewhere, and as he was walking between some mounds he met a man, who
asked him where he was going.

'I am going about seeking for service,' said the boy.

'Will you serve me?' asked the man.

'Oh, yes; just as readily you as anyone else,' said the boy.

'But can you read?' asked the man.

'As well as the priest,' said the boy.

Then I can't have you,' said the man. 'In fact, I was just wanting a boy
who couldn't read. His only work would be to dust my old books.'

The man then went on his way, and left the boy looking after him.

'It was a pity I didn't get that place,' thought he 'That was just the
very thing for me.'

Making up his mind to get the situation if possible, he hid himself
behind one of the mounds, and turned his jacket outside in, so that the
man would not know him again so easily. Then he ran along behind the
mounds, and met the man at the other end of them.

'Where are you going, my little boy?' said the man, who did not notice
that it was the same one he had met before.

'I am going about seeking for service?' said the boy.

'Will you serve me?' asked the man.

'Oh, yes; just as readily you as anyone else,' said the boy.

'But can you read?' said the man.

'No, I don't know a single letter,' said the boy.

The man then took him into his service, and all the work he had to do
was to dust his master's books. But as he did this he had plenty of time
to read them as well, and he read away at them until at last he was just
as wise as his master--who was a great wizard--and could perform all
kinds of magic. Among other feats, he could change himself into the
shape of any animal, or any other thing that he pleased.

When he had learned all this he did not think it worth while staying
there any longer, so he ran away home to his parents again. Soon after
this there was a market in the next village, and the boy told his mother
that he had learned how to change himself into the shape of any animal
he chose.

'Now,' said he, 'I shall change myself to a horse, and father can take
me to market and sell me. I shall come home again all right.'

His mother was frightened at the idea, but the boy told her that she
need not be alarmed; all would be well. So he changed himself to a
horse, such a fine horse, too, that his father got a high price for it
at the market; but after the bargain was made, and the money paid, the
boy changed again to his own shape, when no one was looking, and went
home.

The story spread all over the country about the fine horse that had been
sold and then had disappeared, and at last the news came to the ears of
the wizard.

'Aha!' said he, 'this is that boy of mine, who befooled me and ran away;
but I shall have him yet.'

The next time that there was a market the boy again changed himself to
a horse, and was taken thither by his father. The horse soon found a
purchaser, and while the two were inside drinking the luck-penny the
wizard came along and saw the horse. He knew at once that it was not an
ordinary one, so he also went inside, and offered the purchaser far more
than he had paid for it, so the latter sold it to him.

The first thing the wizard now did was to lead the horse away to a smith
to get a red-hot nail driven into its mouth, because after that it could
not change its shape again. When the horse saw this it changed itself
to a dove, and flew up into the air. The wizard at once changed himself
into a hawk, and flew up after it. The dove now turned into a gold ring,
and fell into a girl's lap. The hawk now turned into a man, and offered
the girl a great sum of money for the gold ring, but she would not part
with it, seeing that it had fallen down to her, as it were, from Heaven.
However, the wizard kept on offering her more and more for it, until at
last the gold ring grew frightened, and changed itself into a grain of
barley, which fell on the ground. The man then turned into a hen, and
began to search for the grain of barley, but this again changed itself
to a pole-cat, and took off the hen's head with a single snap.

The wizard was now dead, the pole-cat put on human shape, and the youth
afterwards married the girl, and from that time forward let all his
magic arts alone.
Two Brothers
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Long ago there lived two brothers, both of them very handsome, and both
so very poor that they seldom had anything to eat but the fish which
they caught. One day they had been out in their boat since sunrise
without a single bite, and were just thinking of putting up their lines
and going home to bed when they felt a little feeble tug, and, drawing
in hastily, they found a tiny fish at the end of the hook.

'What a wretched little creature!' cried one brother. 'However, it is
better than nothing, and I will bake him with bread crumbs and have him
for supper.'

'Oh, do not kill me yet!' begged the fish; 'I will bring you good
luck--indeed I will!'

'You silly thing!' said the young man; 'I've caught you, and I shall eat
you.'

But his brother was sorry for the fish, and put in a word for him.

'Let the poor little fellow live. He would hardly make one bite, and,
after all, how do we know we are not throwing away our luck! Put him
back into the sea. It will be much better.'

'If you will let me live,' said the fish, 'you will find on the sands
to-morrow morning two beautiful horses splendidly saddled and bridled,
and on them you can go through the world as knights seeking adventures.'

'Oh dear, what nonsense!' exclaimed the elder; 'and, besides, what proof
have we that you are speaking the truth?'

But again the younger brother interposed: 'Oh, do let him live! You know
if he is lying to us we can always catch him again. It is quite worth
while trying.'

At last the young man gave in, and threw the fish back into the sea; and
both brothers went supperless to bed, and wondered what fortune the next
day would bring.

At the first streaks of dawn they were both up, and in a very few
minutes were running down to the shore. And there, just as the fish had
said, stood two magnificent horses, saddled and bridled, and on their
backs lay suits of armour and under-dresses, two swords, and two purses
of gold.

'There!' said the younger brother. 'Are you not thankful you did not
eat that fish? He has brought us good luck, and there is no knowing how
great we may become! Now, we will each seek our own adventures. If you
will take one road I will go the other.'

'Very well,' replied the elder; 'but how shall we let each other know if
we are both living?'

'Do you see this fig-tree?' said the younger. 'Well, whenever we want
news of each other we have only to come here and make a slit with our
swords in the back. If milk flows, it is a sign that we are well and
prosperous; but if, instead of milk, there is blood, then we are either
dead or in great danger.'

Then the two brothers put on their armour, buckled their swords, and
pocketed their purees; and, after taking a tender farewell of each
other, they mounted their horses and went their various ways.


The elder brother rode straight on till he reached the borders of a
strange kingdom. He crossed the frontier, and soon found himself on
the banks of a river; and before him, in the middle of the stream, a
beautiful girl sat chained to a rock and weeping bitterly. For in this
river dwelt a serpent with seven heads, who threatened to lay waste the
whole land by breathing fire and flame from his nostrils unless the king
sent him every morning a man for his breakfast. This had gone on so long
that now there were no men left, and he had been obliged to send his
own daughter instead, and the poor girl was waiting till the monster got
hungry and felt inclined to eat her.

When the young man saw the maiden weeping bitterly he said to her, 'What
is the matter, my poor girl?'

'Oh!' she answered, 'I am chained here till a horrible serpent with
seven heads comes to eat me. Oh, sir, do not linger here, or he will eat
you too.'

'I shall stay,' replied the young man, 'for I mean to set you free.'

'That is impossible. You do not know what a fearful monster the serpent
is; you can do nothing against him.'

'That is my affair, beautiful captive,' answered he; 'only tell me,
which way will the serpent come?'

'Well, if you are resolved to free me, listen to my advice. Stand a
little on one side, and then, when the serpent rises to the surface, I
will say to him, "O serpent, to-day you can eat two people. But you had
better begin first with the young man, for I am chained and cannot run
away." When he hears this most likely he will attack you.'

So the young man stood carefully on one side, and by-and-bye he heard
a great rushing in the water; and a horrible monster came up to the
surface and looked out for the rock where the king's daughter was
chained, for it was getting late and he was hungry.

But she cried out, 'O serpent, to-day you can eat two people. And you
had better begin with the young man, for I am chained and cannot run
away.'

Then the serpent made a rush at the youth with wide open jaws to swallow
him at one gulp, but the young man leaped aside and drew his sword,
and fought till he had cut off all the seven heads. And when the great
serpent lay dead at his feet he loosed the bonds of the king's daughter,
and she flung herself into his arms and said, 'You have saved me from
that monster, and now you shall be my husband, for my father has made
a proclamation that whoever could slay the serpent should have his
daughter to wife.'

But he answered, 'I cannot become your husband yet, for I have still far
to travel. But wait for me seven years and seven months. Then, if I do
not return, you are free to marry whom you will. And in case you should
have forgotten, I will take these seven tongues with me so that when I
bring them forth you may know that I am really he who slew the serpent.'

So saying he cut out the seven tongues, and the princess gave him a
thick cloth to wrap them in; and he mounted his horse and rode away.

Not long after he had gone there arrived at the river a slave who had
been sent by the king to learn the fate of his beloved daughter. And
when the slave saw the princess standing free and safe before him, with
the body of the monster lying at her feet, a wicked plan came into his
head, and he said, 'Unless you promise to tell your father it was I who
slew the serpent, I will kill you and bury you in this place, and no one
will ever know what befell.'

What could the poor girl do? This time there was no knight to come to
her aid. So she promised to do as the slave wished, and he took up the
seven heads and brought the princess to her father.

Oh, how enchanted the king was to see her again, and the whole town
shared his joy!

And the slave was called upon to tell how he had slain the monster, and
when he had ended the king declared that he should have the princess to
wife.

But she flung herself at her father's feet, and prayed him to delay.
'You have passed your royal word, and cannot go back from it Yet grant
me this grace, and let seven years and seven months go by before you
wed me. When they are over, then I will marry the slave.' And the king
listened to her, and seven years and seven months she looked for her
bridegroom, and wept for him night and day.

All this time the young man was riding through the world, and when the
seven years and seven months were over he came back to the town where
the princess lived--only a few days before the wedding. And he stood
before the king, and said to him: 'Give me your daughter, O king, for
I slew the seven-headed serpent. And as a sign that my words are true,
look on these seven tongues, which I cut from his seven heads, and on
this embroidered cloth, which was given me by your daughter.'

Then the princess lifted up her voice and said, 'Yes, dear father, he
has spoken the truth, and it is he who is my real bridegroom. Yet pardon
the slave, for he was sorely tempted.'

But the king answered, 'Such treachery can no man pardon. Quick, away
with him, and off with his head!'

So the false slave was put to death, that none might follow in his
footsteps, and the wedding feast was held, and the hearts of all
rejoiced that the true bridegroom had come at last.

These two lived happy and contentedly for a long while, when one
evening, as the young man was looking from the window, he saw on a
mountain that lay out beyond the town a great bright light.

'What can it be?' he said to his wife.


'Ah! do not look at it,' she answered, 'for it comes from the house of
a wicked witch whom no man can manage to kill.' But the princess had
better have kept silence, for her words made her husband's heart burn
within him, and he longed to try his strength against the witch's
cunning. And all day long the feeling grew stronger, till the next
morning he mounted his horse, and in spite of his wife's tears, he rode
off to the mountain.

The distance was greater than he thought, and it was dark before he
reached the foot of the mountain; indeed, he could not have found the
road at all had it not been for the bright light, which shone like the
moon on his path. At length he came to the door of a fine castle, which
had a blaze streaming from every window. He mounted a flight of steps
and entered a hall where a hideous old woman was sitting on a golden
chair.

She scowled at the young man and said, 'With a single one of the hairs
of my head I can turn you into stone.'

'Oh, what nonsense!' cried he. 'Be quiet, old woman. What could you
do with one hair?' But the witch pulled out a hair and laid it on his
shoulder, and his limbs grew cold and heavy, and he could not stir.

Now at this very moment the younger brother was thinking of him, and
wondering how he had got on during all the years since they had parted.
'I will go to the fig-tree,' he said to himself, 'to see whether he is
alive or dead.' So he rode through the forest till he came where the
fig-tree stood, and cut a slit in the bark, and waited. In a moment a
little gurgling noise was heard, and out came a stream of blood, running
fast. 'Ah, woe is me!' he cried bitterly. 'My brother is dead or dying!
Shall I ever reach him in time to save his life?' Then, leaping on his
horse, he shouted, 'Now, my steed, fly like the wind!' and they rode
right through the world, till one day they came to the town where the
young man and his wife lived. Here the princess had been sitting every
day since the morning that her husband had left her, weeping bitter
tears, and listening for his footsteps. And when she saw his brother
ride under the balcony she mistook him for her own husband, for they
were so alike that no man might tell the difference, and her heart
bounded, and, leaning down, she called to him, 'At last! at last! how
long have I waited for thee!' When the younger brother heard these words
he said to himself, 'So it was here that my brother lived, and this
beautiful woman is my sister-in-law,' but he kept silence, and let her
believe he was indeed her husband. Full of joy, the princess led him to
the old king, who welcomed him as his own son, and ordered a feast to
be made for him. And the princess was beside herself with gladness, but
when she would have put her arms round him and kissed him he held up
his hand to stop her, saying, 'Touch me not,' at which she marvelled
greatly.

In this manner several days went by. And one evening, as the young man
leaned from the balcony, he saw a bright light shining on the mountain.

'What can that be?' he said to the princess.

'Oh, come away,' she cried; 'has not that light already proved your
bane? Do you wish to fight a second time with that old witch?'

He marked her words, though she knew it not, and they taught him where
his brother was, and what had befallen him. So before sunrise he stole
out early, saddled his horse, and rode off to the mountain. But the way
was further than he thought, and on the road he met a little old man who
asked him whither he was going.

Then the young man told him his story, and added. 'Somehow or other I
must free my brother, who has fallen into the power of an old witch.'

'I will tell you what you must do,' said the old man. 'The witch's power
lies in her hair; so when you see her spring on her and seize her by
the hair, and then she cannot harm you. Be very careful never to let her
hair go, bid her lead you to your brother, and force her to bring him
back to life. For she has an ointment that will heal all wounds, and
even wake the dead. And when your brother stands safe and well before
you, then cut off her head, for she is a wicked woman.'

The young man was grateful for these words, and promised to obey them.
Then he rode on, and soon reached the castle. He walked boldly up the
steps and entered the hall, where the hideous old witch came to meet
him. She grinned horribly at him, and cried out, 'With one hair of my
head I can change you into stone.'

'Can you, indeed?' said the young man, seizing her by the hair. 'You old
wretch! tell me what you have done with my brother, or I will cut your
head off this very instant.' Now the witch's strength was all gone from
her, and she had to obey.

'I will take you to your brother,' she said, hoping to get the better of
him by cunning, 'but leave me alone. You hold me so tight that I cannot
walk.'

'You must manage somehow,' he answered, and held her tighter than ever.
She led him into a large hall filled with stone statues, which once had
been men, and, pointing out one, she said, 'There is your brother.'

The young man looked at them all and shook his head. 'My brother is not
here. Take me to him, or it will be the worse for you.' But she tried
to put him off with other statues, though it was no good, and it was
not until they had reached the last hall of all that he saw his brother
lying on the ground.

'That is my brother,' said he. 'Now give me the ointment that will
restore him to life.'

Very unwillingly the old witch opened a cupboard close by filled with
bottles and jars, and took down one and held it out to the young man.
But he was on the watch for trickery, and examined it carefully, and saw
that it had no power to heal. This happened many times, till at length
she found it was no use, and gave him the one he wanted. And when he
had it safe he made her stoop down and smear it over his brother's face,
taking care all the while never to loose her hair, and when the dead
man opened his eyes the youth drew his sword and cut off her head with
a single blow. Then the elder brother got up and stretched himself, and
said, 'Oh, how long I have slept! And where am I?'

'The old witch had enchanted you, but now she is dead and you are free.
We will wake up the other knights that she laid under her spells, and
then we will go.'

This they did, and, after sharing amongst them the jewels and gold they
found in the castle, each man went his way. The two brothers remained
together, the elder tightly grasping the ointment which had brought him
back to life.

They had much to tell each other as they rode along, and at last the
younger man exclaimed, 'O fool, to leave such a beautiful wife to go and
fight a witch! She took me for her husband, and I did not say her nay.'

When the elder brother heard this a great rage filled his heart, and,
without saying one word, he drew his sword and slew his brother, and his
body rolled in the dust. Then he rode on till he reached his home,
where his wife was still sitting, weeping bitterly. When she saw him
she sprang up with a cry, and threw herself into his arms. 'Oh, how long
have I waited for thee! Never, never must you leave me any more!'

When the old king heard the news he welcomed him as a son, and made
ready a feast, and all the court sat down. And in the evening, when the
young man was alone with his wife, she said to him, 'Why would you not
let me touch you when you came back, but always thrust me away when I
tried to put my arms round you or kiss you?'

Then the young man understood how true his brother had been to him, and
he sat down and wept and wrung his hands because of the wicked murder
that he had done. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, for he remembered the
ointment which lay hidden in his garments, and he rushed to the place
where his brother still lay. He fell on his knees beside the body, and,
taking out the salve, he rubbed it over the neck where the wound was
gaping wide, and the skin healed and the sinews grew strong, and the
dead man sat up and looked round him. And the two brothers embraced each
other, and the elder asked forgiveness for his wicked blow; and they
went back to the palace together, and were never parted any more.



How the Hermit Helped
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There was once a girl so poor that she had nothing to live on, and
wandered about the world asking for charity. One day she arrived at
a thatched cottage, and inquired if they could give her any work. The
farmer said he wanted a cowherd, as his own had left him, and if the
girl liked the place she might take it. So she became a cowherd.

One morning she was driving her cows through the meadows when she heard
near by a loud groan that almost sounded human. She hastened to the spot
from which the noise came, and found it proceeded from a lion who lay
stretched upon the ground.

You can guess how frightened she was! But the lion seemed in such pain
that she was sorry for him, and drew nearer and nearer till she saw he
had a large thorn in one foot. She pulled out the thorn and bound up the
place, and the lion was grateful, and licked her hand by way of thanks
with his big rough tongue.

When the girl had finished she went back to find the cows, but they had
gone, and though she hunted everywhere she never found them; and she had
to return home and confess to her master, who scolded her bitterly, and
afterwards beat her. Then he said, 'Now you will have to look after the
asses.'

So every day she had to take the asses to the woods to feed, until one
morning, exactly a year after she had found the lion, she heard a groan
which sounded quite human. She went straight to the place from which the
noise came, and, to her great surprise, beheld the same lion stretched
on the ground with a deep wound across his face.

This time she was not afraid at all, and ran towards him, washing the
wound and laying soothing herbs upon it; and when she had bound it up
the lion thanked her in the same manner as before.

After that she returned to her flock, but they were nowhere to be
seen. She searched here and she searched there, but they had vanished
completely!

Then she had to go home and confess to her master, who first scolded her
and afterwards beat her. 'Now go,' he ended, 'and look after the pigs!'

So the next day she took out the pigs, and found them such good feeding
grounds that they grew fatter every day.

Another year passed by, and one morning when the maiden was out with her
pigs she heard a groan which sounded quite human. She ran to see what
it was, and found her old friend the lion, wounded through and through,
fast dying under a tree.

She fell on her knees before him and washed his wounds one by one, and
laid healing herbs upon them. And the lion licked her hands and thanked
her, and asked if she would not stay and sit by him. But the girl said
she had her pigs to watch, and she must go and see after them.

So she ran to the place where she had left them, but they had vanished
as if the earth had swallowed them up. She whistled and called, but only
the birds answered her.

Then she sank down on the ground and wept bitterly, not daring to return
home until some hours had passed away.

And when she had had her cry out she got up and searched all up and down
the wood. But it was no use; there was not a sign of the pigs.

At last she thought that perhaps if she climbed a tree she might
see further. But no sooner was she seated on the highest branch than
something happened which put the pigs quite out of her head. This was a
handsome young man who was coming down the path; and when he had almost
reached the tree he pulled aside a rock and disappeared behind it.

The maiden rubbed her eyes and wondered if she had been dreaming. Next
she thought, 'I will not stir from here till I see him come out, and
discover who he is.' Accordingly she waited, and at dawn the next
morning the rock moved to one side and a lion came out.

When he had gone quite out of sight the girl climbed down from the tree
and went to the rock, which she pushed aside, and entered the opening
before her. The path led to a beautiful house. She went in, swept and
dusted the furniture, and put everything tidy. Then she ate a very good
dinner, which was on a shelf in the corner, and once more clambered up
to the top of her tree.

As the sun set she saw the same young man walking gaily down the path,
and, as before, he pushed aside the rock and disappeared behind it.

Next morning out came the lion. He looked sharply about him on all
sides, but saw no one, and then vanished into the forest.

The maiden then came down from the tree and did exactly as she had done
the day before. Thus three days went by, and every day she went and
tidied up the palace. At length, when the girl found she was no nearer
to discovering the secret, she resolved to ask him, and in the evening
when she caught sight of him coming through the wood she came down from
the tree and begged him to tell her his name.

The young man looked very pleased to see her, and said he thought it
must be she who had secretly kept his house for so many days. And he
added that he was a prince enchanted by a powerful giant, but was only
allowed to take his own shape at night, for all day he was forced to
appear as the lion whom she had so often helped; and, more than this,
it was the giant who had stolen the oxen and the asses and the pigs in
revenge for her kindness.

And the girl asked him, 'What can I do to disenchant you?'

But he said he was afraid it was very difficult, because the only way
was to get a lock of hair from the head of a king's daughter, to spin
it, and to make from it a cloak for the giant, who lived up on the top
of a high mountain.

'Very well,' answered the girl, 'I will go to the city, and knock at
the door of the king's palace, and ask the princess to take me as a
servant.'

So they parted, and when she arrived at the city she walked about the
streets crying, 'Who will hire me for a servant? Who will hire me for a
servant?' But, though many people liked her looks, for she was clean and
neat, the maiden would listen to none, and still continued crying, 'Who
will hire me for a servant? Who will hire me for a servant?'

At last there came the waiting-maid of the princess.

'What can you do?' she said; and the girl was forced to confess that she
could do very little.

'Then you will have to do scullion's work, and wash up dishes,' said
she; and they went straight back to the palace.

Then the maiden dressed her hair afresh, and made herself look very neat
and smart, and everyone admired and praised her, till by-and-bye it came
to the ears of the princess. And she sent for the girl, and when she saw
her, and how beautifully she had dressed her hair, the princess told her
she was to come and comb out hers.

Now the hair of the princess was very thick and long, and shone like
the sun. And the girl combed it and combed it till it was brighter than
ever. And the princess was pleased, and bade her come every day and comb
her hair, till at length the girl took courage, and begged leave to cut
off one of the long, thick locks.

The princess, who was very proud of her hair, did not like the idea of
parting with any of it, so she said no. But the girl could not give
up hope, and each day she entreated to be allowed to cut off just one
tress. At length the princess lost patience, and exclaimed, 'You may
have it, then, on condition that you shall find the handsomest prince in
the world to be my bridegroom!'

And the girl answered that she would, and cut off the lock, and wove it
into a coat that glittered like silk, and brought it to the young man,
who told her to carry it straight to the giant. But that she must be
careful to cry out a long way off what she had with her, or else he
would spring upon her and run her through with his sword.

So the maiden departed and climbed up the mountain, but before she
reached the top the giant heard her footsteps, and rushed out breathing
fire and flame, having a sword in one hand and a club in the other. But
she cried loudly that she had brought him the coat, and then he grew
quiet, and invited her to come into his house.

He tried on the coat, but it was too short, and he threw it off, and
declared it was no use. And the girl picked it up sadly, and returned
quite in despair to the king's palace.

The next morning, when she was combing the princess's hair, she begged
leave to cut off another lock. At first the princess said no, but the
girl begged so hard that at length she gave in on condition that she
should find her a prince as bridegroom.

The maiden told her that she had already found him, and spun the lock
into shining stuff, and fastened it on to the end of the coat. And when
it was finished she carried it to the giant.

This time it fitted him, and he was quite pleased, and asked her what
he could give her in return. And she said that the only reward he could
give her was to take the spell off the lion and bring him back to his
own shape.

For a long time the giant would not hear of it, but in the end he gave
in, and told her exactly how it must all be done. She was to kill the
lion herself and cut him up very small; then she must burn him, and cast
his ashes into the water, and out of the water the prince would come
free from enchantment for ever.

But the maiden went away weeping, lest the giant should have deceived
her, and that after she had killed the lion she would find she had also
slain the prince.

Weeping she came down the mountain, and weeping she joined the prince,
who was awaiting her at the bottom; and when he had heard her story he
comforted her, and bade her be of good courage, and to do the bidding of
the giant.

And the maiden believed what the prince told her; and in the morning
when he put on his lion's form she took a knife and slew him, and cut
him up very small, and burnt him, and cast his ashes into the water, and
out of the water came the prince, beautiful as the day, and as glad to
look upon as the sun himself.


Then the young man thanked the maiden for all she had done for him, and
said she should be his wife and none other. But the maiden only wept
sore, and answered that that she could never be, for she had given her
promise to the princess when she cut off her hair that the prince should
wed her and her only.

But the prince replied, 'If it is the princess, we must go quickly. Come
with me.'

So they went together to the king's palace. And when the king and queen
and princess saw the young man a great joy filled their hearts, for they
knew him for the eldest son, who had long ago been enchanted by a giant
and lost to them.

And he asked his parents' consent that he might marry the girl who had
saved him, and a great feast was made, and the maiden became a princess,
and in due time a queen, and she richly deserved all the honours
showered upon her.
Her Destiny
Category: Love Letters
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Long ago there lived a rich merchant who, besides possessing more
treasures than any king in the world, had in his great hall three
chairs, one of silver, one of gold, and one of diamonds. But his
greatest treasure of all was his only daughter, who was called
Catherine.

One day Catherine was sitting in her own room when suddenly the door
flew open, and in came a tall and beautiful woman holding in her hands a
little wheel.

'Catherine,' she said, going up to the girl, 'which would you rather
have-a happy youth or a happy old age?'

Catherine was so taken by surprise that she did not know what to answer,
and the lady repeated again, 'Which would you rather have-a happy youth
or a happy old age?'

Then Catherine thought to herself, 'If I say a happy youth, then I shall
have to suffer all the rest of my life. No, I would bear trouble now,
and have something better to look forward to.' So she looked up and
replied, 'Give me a happy old age.'

'So be it,' said the lady, and turned her wheel as she spoke, vanishing
the next moment as suddenly as she had come.

Now this beautiful lady was the Destiny of poor Catherine.

Only a few days after this the merchant heard the news that all his
finest ships, laden with the richest merchandise, had been sunk in a
storm, and he was left a beggar. The shock was too much for him. He took
to his bed, and in a short time he was dead of his disappointment.

So poor Catherine was left alone in the world without a penny or a
creature to help her. But she was a brave girl and full of spirit, and
soon made up her mind that the best thing she could do was to go to the
nearest town and become a servant. She lost no time in getting herself
ready, and did not take long over her journey; and as she was passing
down the chief street of the town a noble lady saw her out of the
window, and, struck by her sad face, said to her: 'Where are you going
all alone, my pretty girl?'

'Ah, my lady, I am very poor, and must go to service to earn my bread.'

'I will take you into my service,' said she; and Catherine served her
well.

Some time after her mistress said to Catherine, 'I am obliged to go out
for a long while, and must lock the house door, so that no thieves shall
get in.'

So she went away, and Catherine took her work and sat down at the
window. Suddenly the door burst open, and in came her Destiny.

'Oh! so here you are, Catherine! Did you really think I was going to
leave you in peace?' And as she spoke she walked to the linen press
where Catherine's mistress kept all her finest sheets and underclothes,
tore everything in pieces, and flung them on the floor. Poor Catherine
wrung her hands and wept, for she thought to herself, 'When my lady
comes back and sees all this ruin she will think it is my fault,' and
starting up, she fled through the open door. Then Destiny took all the
pieces and made them whole again, and put them back in the press, and
when everything was tidy she too left the house.

When the mistress reached home she called Catherine, but no Catherine
was there. 'Can she have robbed me?' thought the old lady, and looked
hastily round the house; but nothing was missing. She wondered why
Catherine should have disappeared like this, but she heard no more of
her, and in a few days she filled her place.

Meanwhile Catherine wandered on and on, without knowing very well where
she was going, till at last she came to another town. Just as before,
a noble lady happened to see her passing her window, and called out to
her, 'Where are you going all alone, my pretty girl?'

And Catherine answered, 'Ah, my lady, I am very poor, and must go to
service to earn my bread.'

'I will take you into my service,' said the lady; and Catherine served
her well, and hoped she might now be left in peace. But, exactly as
before, one day that Catherine was left in the house alone her Destiny
came again and spoke to her with hard words: 'What! are you here now?'
And in a passion she tore up everything she saw, till in sheer misery
poor Catherine rushed out of the house. And so it befell for seven
years, and directly Catherine found a fresh place her Destiny came and
forced her to leave it.

After seven years, however, Destiny seemed to get tired of persecuting
her, and a time of peace set in for Catherine. When she had been chased
away from her last house by Destiny's wicked pranks she had taken
service with another lady, who told her that it would be part of her
daily work to walk to a mountain that overshadowed the town, and,
climbing up to the top, she was to lay on the ground some loaves
of freshly baked bread, and cry with a loud voice, 'O Destiny, my
mistress,' three times. Then her lady's Destiny would come and take away
the offering. 'That will I gladly do,' said Catherine.

So the years went by, and Catherine was still there, and every day
she climbed the mountain with her basket of bread on her arm. She was
happier than she had been, but sometimes, when no one saw her, she would
weep as she thought over her old life, and how different it was to the
one she was now leading. One day her lady saw her, and said, 'Catherine,
what is it? Why are you always weeping?' And then Catherine told her
story.

'I have got an idea,' exclaimed the lady. 'To-morrow, when you take the
bread to the mountain, you shall pray my Destiny to speak to yours, and
entreat her to leave you in peace. Perhaps something may come of it!'

At these words Catherine dried her eyes, and next morning, when she
climbed the mountain, she told all she had suffered, and cried, 'O
Destiny, my mistress, pray, I entreat you, of my Destiny that she may
leave me in peace.'

And Destiny answered, 'Oh, my poor girl, know you not your Destiny lies
buried under seven coverlids, and can hear nothing? But if you will come
to-morrow I will bring her with me.'

And after Catherine had gone her way her lady's Destiny went to find
her sister, and said to her, 'Dear sister, has not Catherine suffered
enough? It is surely time for her good days to begin?'

And the sister answered, 'To-morrow you shall bring her to me, and I
will give her something that may help her out of her need.'

The next morning Catherine set out earlier than usual for the mountain,
and her lady's Destiny took the girl by the hand and led her to her
sister, who lay under the seven coverlids. And her Destiny held out
to Catherine a ball of silk, saying, 'Keep this--it may be useful some
day;' then pulled the coverings over her head again.

But Catherine walked sadly down the hill, and went straight to her lady
and showed her the silken ball, which was the end of all her high hopes.

'What shall I do with it?' she asked. 'It is not worth sixpence, and it
is no good to me!'

'Take care of it,' replied her mistress. 'Who can tell how useful it may
be?'

A little while after this grand preparations were made for the king's
marriage, and all the tailors in the town were busy embroidering fine
clothes. The wedding garment was so beautiful nothing like it had ever
been seen before, but when it was almost finished the tailor found that
he had no more silk. The colour was very rare, and none could be found
like it, and the king made a proclamation that if anyone happened to
possess any they should bring it to the court, and he would give them a
large sum.

'Catherine!' exclaimed the lady, who had been to the tailors and seen
the wedding garment, 'your ball of silk is exactly the right colour.
Bring it to the king, and you can ask what you like for it.'

Then Catherine put on her best clothes and went to the court, and looked
more beautiful than any woman there.

'May it please your majesty,' she said, 'I have brought you a ball of
silk of the colour you asked for, as no one else has any in the town.'

'Your majesty,' asked one of the courtiers, 'shall I give the maiden its
weight in gold?'

The king agreed, and a pair of scales were brought; and a handful of
gold was placed in one scale and the silken ball in the other. But lo!
let the king lay in the scales as many gold pieces as he would, the silk
was always heavier still. Then the king took some larger scales, and
heaped up all his treasures on one side, but the silk on the other
outweighed them all. At last there was only one thing left that had not
been put in, and that was his golden crown. And he took it from his head
and set it on top of all, and at last the scale moved and the ball had
founds its balance.

'Where got you this silk?' asked the king.

'It was given me, royal majesty, by my mistress,' replied Catherine.

'That is not true,' said the king, 'and if you do not tell me the truth
I will have your head cut off this instant.'

So Catherine told him the whole story, and how she had once been as rich
as he.

Now there lived at the court a wise woman, and she said to Catherine,
'You have suffered much, my poor girl, but at length your luck has
turned, and I know by the weighing of the scales through the crown that
you will die a queen.'

'So she shall,' cried the king, who overheard these words; 'she shall
die my queen, for she is more beautiful than all the ladies of the
court, and I will marry no one else.'

And so it fell out. The king sent back the bride he had promised to wed
to her own country, and the same Catherine was queen at the marriage
feast instead, and lived happy and contented to the end of her life.
The King
Category: Love Letters
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Fifty years ago there lived a king who was very anxious to get married;
but, as he was quite determined that his wife should be as beautiful as
the sun, the thing was not so easy as it seemed, for no maiden came up
to his standard. Then he commanded a trusty servant to search through
the length and breadth of the land till he found a girl fair enough to
be queen, and if he had the good luck to discover one he was to bring
her back with him.

The servant set out at once on his journey, and sought high and low-in
castles and cottages; but though pretty maidens were plentiful as
blackberries, he felt sure that none of them would please the king.

One day he had wandered far and wide, and was feeling very tired and
thirsty. By the roadside stood a tiny little house, and here he knocked
and asked for a cup of water. Now in this house dwelt two sisters, and
one was eighty and the other ninety years old. They were very poor, and
earned their living by spinning. This had kept their hands very soft and
white, like the hands of a girl, and when the water was passed through
the lattice, and the servant saw the small, delicate fingers, he said to
himself: 'A maiden must indeed be lovely if she has a hand like that.'
And he made haste back, and told the king.

'Go back at once,' said his majesty, 'and try to get a sight of her.'

The faithful servant departed on his errand without losing any time,
and again he knocked at the door of the little house and begged for some
water. As before, the old woman did not open the door, but passed the
water through the lattice.

'Do you live here alone?' asked the man.

'No,' replied she, 'my sister lives with me. We are poor girls, and have
to work for our bread.'

'How old are you?'

'I am fifteen, and she is twenty.'

Then the servant went back to the king, and told him all he knew. And
his majesty answered: 'I will have the fifteen-year-old one. Go and
bring her here.'

The servant returned a third time to the little house and knocked at the
door. In reply to his knock the lattice window was pushed open, and a
voice inquired what it was he wanted.

'The king has desired me to bring back the youngest of you to become his
queen,' he replied.

'Tell his majesty I am ready to do his bidding, but since my birth no
ray of light has fallen upon my face. If it should ever do so I shall
instantly grow black. Therefore beg, I pray you, his most gracious
majesty to send this evening a shut carriage, and I will return in it to
the castle.

When the king heard this he ordered his great golden carriage to be
prepared, and in it to be placed some magnificent robes; and the old
woman wrapped herself in a thick veil, and was driven to the castle.

The king was eagerly awaiting her, and when she arrived he begged her
politely to raise her veil and let him see her face.

But she answered: 'Here the tapers are too bright and the light too
strong. Would you have me turn black under your very eyes?'

And the king believed her words, and the marriage took place without the
veil being once lifted. Afterwards, when they were alone, he raised the
corner, and knew for the first time that he had wedded a wrinkled old
woman. And, in a furious burst of anger, he dashed open the window and
flung her out. But, luckily for her, her clothes caught on a nail in the
wall, and kept her hanging between heaven and earth.

While she was thus suspended, expecting every moment to be dashed to the
ground, four fairies happened to pass by.

'Look, sisters,' cried one, 'surely that is the old woman that the king
sent for. Shall we wish that her clothes may give way, and that she
should be dashed to the ground?'

'Oh no! no!' exclaimed another. 'Let us wish her something good. I
myself will wish her youth.'

'And I beauty.'

'And I wisdom.'

'And I a tender heart.'

So spake the fairies, and went their way, leaving the most beautiful
maiden in the world behind them.

The next morning when the king looked from his window he saw this lovely
creature hanging on the nail. 'Ah! what have I done? Surely I must have
been blind last night!'

And he ordered long ladders to be brought and the maiden to be rescued.
Then he fell on his knees before her, and prayed her to forgive him, and
a great feast was made in her honour.

Some days after came the ninety-year-old sister to the palace and asked
for the queen.

'Who is that hideous old witch?' said the king.

'Oh, an old neighbour of mine, who is half silly,' she replied.

But the old woman looked at her steadily, and knew her again, and said:
'How have you managed to grow so young and beautiful? I should like to
be young and beautiful too.'

This question she repeated the whole day long, till at length the queen
lost patience and said: 'I had my old head cut off, and this new head
grew in its place.'

Then the old woman went to a barber, and spoke to him, saying, 'I will
give you all you ask if you will only cut off my head, so that I may
become young and lovely.'

'But, my good woman, if I do that you will die!'

But the old woman would listen to nothing; and at last the barber took
out his knife and struck the first blow at her neck.

'Ah!' she shrieked as she felt the pain.

'Il faut souffrir pour etre belle,' said the barber, who had been in
France.

And at the second blow her head rolled off, and the old woman was dead
for good and all.
What I Have Learned
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There was once a man who had three daughters, and they were all married
to trolls, who lived underground. One day the man thought that he would
pay them a visit, and his wife gave him some dry bread to eat by the
way. After he had walked some distance he grew both tired and hungry, so
he sat down on the east side of a mound and began to eat his dry bread.
The mound then opened, and his youngest daughter came out of it, and
said, 'Why, father! why are you not coming in to see me?'

'Oh,' said he, 'if I had known that you lived here, and had seen any
entrance, I would have come in.'

Then he entered the mound along with her.

The troll came home soon after this, and his wife told him that her
father was come, and asked him to go and buy some beef to make broth
with.

'We can get it easier than that!' said the troll.

He fixed an iron spike into one of the beams of the roof, and ran his
head against this till he had knocked several large pieces off his head.
He was just as well as ever after doing this, and they got their broth
without further trouble.

The troll then gave the old man a sackful of money, and laden with this
he betook himself homewards. When he came near his home he remembered
that he had a cow about to calve, so he laid down the money on the
ground, ran home as fast as he could, and asked his wife whether the cow
had calved yet.

'What kind of a hurry is this to come home in?' said she. 'No, the cow
has not calved yet.'

'Then you must come out and help me in with a sackful of money,' said
the man.

'A sackful of money?' cried his wife.

'Yes, a sackful of money,' said he. 'Is that so very wonderful?'

His wife did not believe very much what he told her, but she humoured
him, and went out with him.

When they came to the spot where he had left it there was no money
there; a thief had come along and stolen it. His wife then grew angry
and scolded him heartily.

'Well, well!' said he, 'hang the money! I know what I have learned.'

'What have you learned?' said she.

'Ah! I know that,' said the man.

After some time had passed the man had a mind to visit his second eldest
daughter. His wife again gave him some dry bread to eat, and when he
grew tired and hungry he sat down on the east side of a mound and began
to eat it. As he sat there his daughter came up out of the mound, and
invited him to come inside, which he did very willingly.

Soon after this the troll came home. It was dark by that time, and his
wife bade him go and buy some candles.

'Oh, we shall soon get a light,' said the troll. With that he dipped his
fingers into the fire, and they then gave light without being burned in
the least.

The old man got two sacks of money here, and plodded away homewards with
these. When he was very nearly home he again thought of the cow that
was with calf, so he laid down the money, ran home, and asked his wife
whether the cow had calved yet.

'Whatever is the matter with you?' said she. 'You come hurrying as if
the whole house was about to fall. You may set your mind at rest: the
cow has not calved yet.'

The man now asked her to come and help him home with the two sacks of
money. She did not believe him very much, but he continued to assure her
that it was quite true, till at last she gave in and went with him. When
they came to the spot there had again been a thief there and taken the
money. It was no wonder that the woman was angry about this, but the man
only said, 'Ah, if you only knew what I have learned.'

A third time the man set out--to visit his eldest daughter. When he
came to a mound he sat down on the east side of it and ate the dry bread
which his wife had given him to take with him. The daughter then came
out of the mound and invited her father to come inside.

In a little the troll came home, and his wife asked him to go and buy
some fish.

'We can get them much more easily than that,' said the troll. 'Give me
your dough trough and your ladle.'

They seated themselves in the trough, and rowed out on the lake which
was beside the mound. When they had got out a little way the troll said
to his wife, 'Are my eyes green?'

'No, not yet,' said she.

He rowed on a little further and asked again, 'Are my eyes not green
yet?'

'Yes,' said his wife, 'they are green now.'

Then the troll sprang into the water and ladled up so many fish that in
a short time the trough could hold no more. They then rowed home again,
and had a good meal off the fish.

The old man now got three sacks full of money, and set off home with
them. When he was almost home the cow again came into his head, and he
laid down the money. This time, however, he took his wooden shoes and
laid them above the money, thinking that no one would take it after
that. Then he ran home and asked his wife whether the cow had calved. It
had not, and she scolded him again for behaving in this way, but in the
end he persuaded her to go with him to help him with the three sacks of
money.

When they came to the spot they found only the wooden shoes, for a thief
had come along in the meantime and taken all the money. The woman was
very angry, and broke out upon her husband; but he took it all very
quietly, and only said, 'Hang the money! I know what I have learned.'

'What have you learned I should like to know?' said his wife.

'You will see that yet,' said the man.

One day his wife took a fancy for broth, and said to him, 'Oh, go to the
village, and buy a piece of beef to make broth.'

'There's no need of that,' said he; 'we can get it an easier way.' With
that he drove a spike into a beam, and ran his head against it, and in
consequence had to lie in bed for a long time afterwards.

After he had recovered from this his wife asked him one day to go and
buy candles, as they had none.

'No,' he said, 'there's no need for that;' and he stuck his hand into
the fire. This also made him take to bed for a good while.

When he had got better again his wife one day wanted fish, and asked him
to go and buy some. The man, however, wished again to show what he had
learned, so he asked her to come along with him and bring her dough
trough and a ladle. They both seated themselves in this, and rowed upon
the lake. When they had got out a little way the man said, 'Are my eyes
green?'

'No,' said his wife; 'why should they be?'

They rowed a little further out, and he asked again, 'Are my eyes not
green yet?'

'What nonsense is this?' said she; 'why should they be green?'

'Oh, my dear,' said he, 'can't you just say that they are green?'

'Very well,' said she, 'they are green.'

As soon as he heard this he sprang out into the water with the ladle for
the fishes, but he just got leave to stay there with them!


Snowflake
Category: Love Letters
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Once upon a time there lived a peasant called Ivan, and he had a wife
whose name was Marie. They would have been quite happy except for one
thing: they had no children to play with, and as they were now old
people they did not find that watching the children of their neighbours
at all made up to them for having one of their own.

One winter, which nobody living will ever forget, the snow lay so deep
that it came up to the knees of even the tallest man. When it had all
fallen, and the sun was shining again, the children ran out into the
street to play, and the old man and his wife sat at their window and
gazed at them. The children first made a sort of little terrace, and
stamped it hard and firm, and then they began to make a snow woman. Ivan
and Marie watched them, the while thinking about many things.

Suddenly Ivan's face brightened, and, looking at his wife, he said,
'Wife, why shouldn't we make a snow woman too?'

'Why not?' replied Marie, who happened to be in a very good temper; 'it
might amuse us a little. But there is no use making a woman. Let us make
a little snow child, and pretend it is a living one.'

'Yes, let us do that,' said Ivan, and he took down his cap and went into
the garden with his old wife.

Then the two set to work with all their might to make a doll out of
the snow. They shaped a little body and two little hands and two little
feet. On top of all they placed a ball of snow, out of which the head
was to be.

'What in the world are you doing?' asked a passer-by.

'Can't you guess?' returned Ivan.

'Making a snow-child,' replied Marie.

They had finished the nose and the chin. Two holes were left for the
eyes, and Ivan carefully shaped out the mouth. No sooner had he done so
than he felt a warm breath upon his cheek. He started back in surprise
and looked--and behold! the eyes of the child met his, and its lips,
which were as red as raspberries, smiled at him!

'What is it?' cried Ivan, crossing himself. 'Am I mad, or is the thing
bewitched?'

The snow-child bent its head as if it had been really alive. It moved
its little arms and its little legs in the snow that lay about it just
as the living children did theirs.

'Ah! Ivan, Ivan,' exclaimed Marie, trembling with joy, 'heaven has sent
us a child at last!' And she threw herself upon Snowflake (for that was
the snow-child's name) and covered her with kisses. And the loose snow
fell away from Snowflake as an egg shell does from an egg, and it was a
little girl whom Marie held in her arms.

'Oh! my darling Snowflake!' cried the old woman, and led her into the
cottage.

And Snowflake grew fast; each hour as well as each day made a
difference, and every day she became more and more beautiful. The old
couple hardly knew how to contain themselves for joy, and thought of
nothing else. The cottage was always full of village children, for they
amused Snowflake, and there was nothing in the world they would not
have done to amuse her. She was their doll, and they were continually
inventing new dresses for her, and teaching her songs or playing with
her. Nobody knew how clever she was! She noticed everything, and could
learn a lesson in a moment. Anyone would have taken her for thirteen
at least! And, besides all that, she was so good and obedient; and
so pretty, too! Her skin was as white as snow, her eyes as blue as
forget-me-nots, and her hair was long and golden. Only her cheeks had no
colour in them, but were as fair as her forehead.

So the winter went on, till at last the spring sun mounted higher in the
heavens and began to warm the earth. The grass grew green in the fields,
and high in the air the larks were heard singing. The village girls met
and danced in a ring, singing, 'Beautiful spring, how came you here?
How came you here? Did you come on a plough, or was it a harrow?' Only
Snowflake sat quite still by the window of the cottage.

'What is the matter, dear child?' asked Marie. 'Why are you so sad? Are
you ill? or have they treated you unkindly?'

'No,' replied Snowflake, 'it is nothing, mother; no one has hurt me; I
am well.'

The spring sun had chased away the last snow from its hiding place under
the hedges; the fields were full of flowers; nightingales sang in the
trees, and all the world was gay. But the gayer grew the birds and the
flowers the sadder became Snowflake. She hid herself from her playmates,
and curled herself up where the shadows were deepest, like a lily
amongst its leaves. Her only pleasure was to lie amid the green willows
near some sparkling stream. At the dawn and at twilight only she seemed
happy. When a great storm broke, and the earth was white with hail, she
became bright and joyous as the Snowflake of old; but when the clouds
passed, and the hail melted beneath the sun, Snowflake would burst into
tears and weep as a sister would weep over her brother.

The spring passed, and it was the eve of St. John, or Midsummer Day.
This was the greatest holiday of the year, when the young girls met in
the woods to dance and play. They went to fetch Snowflake, and said to
Marie: 'Let her come and dance with us.'

But Marie was afraid; she could not tell why, only she could not bear
the child to go. Snowflake did not wish to go either, but they had no
excuse ready. So Marie kissed the girl and said: 'Go, my Snowflake, and
be happy with your friends, and you, dear children, be careful of her.
You know she is the light of my eyes to me.'

'Oh, we will take care of her,' cried the girls gaily, and they ran off
to the woods. There they wore wreaths, gathered nosegays, and sang songs
some sad, some merry. And whatever they did Snowflake did too.

When the sun set they lit a fire of dry grass, and placed themselves in
a row, Snowflake being the last of all. 'Now, watch us,' they said, 'and
run just as we do.'

And they all began to sing and to jump one after another across the
fire.

Suddenly, close behind them, they heard a sigh, then a groan. 'Ah!' They
turned hastily and looked at each other. There was nothing. They
looked again. Where was Snowflake? She has hidden herself for fun, they
thought, and searched for her everywhere. 'Snowflake! Snowflake!' But
there was no answer. 'Where can she be? Oh, she must have gone home.'
They returned to the village, but there was no Snowflake.

For days after that they sought her high and low. They examined every
bush and every hedge, but there was no Snowflake. And long after
everyone else had given up hope Ivan and Marie would wander through the
woods crying 'Snowflake, my dove, come back, come back!' And sometimes
they thought they heard a call, but it was never the voice of Snowflake.

And what had become of her? Had a fierce wild beast seized her and
dragged her into his lair in the forest? Had some bird carried her off
across the wide blue sea?

No, no beast had touched her, no bird had borne her away. With the
first breath of flame that swept over her when she ran with her friends
Snowflake had melted away, and a little soft haze floating upwards was
all that remained of her.

Peter Bull
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There once lived in Denmark a peasant and his wife who owned a very good
farm, but had no children. They often lamented to each other that they
had no one of their own to inherit all the wealth that they possessed.
They continued to prosper, and became rich people, but there was no heir
to it all.

One year it happened that they owned a pretty little bull-calf, which
they called Peter. It was the prettiest little creature they had ever
seen--so beautiful and so wise that it understood everything that was
said to it, and so gentle and so full of play that both the man and his
wife came to be as fond of it as if it had been their own child.

One day the man said to his wife, 'I wonder, now, whether our parish
clerk could teach Peter to talk; in that case we could not do better
than adopt him as our son, and let him inherit all that we possess.'

'Well, I don't know,' said his wife, 'our clerk is tremendously learned,
and knows much more than his Paternoster, and I could almost believe
that he might be able to teach Peter to talk, for Peter has a
wonderfully good head too. You might at least ask him about it.'

Off went the man to the clerk, and asked him whether he thought he could
teach a bull-calf that they had to speak, for they wished so much to
have it as their heir.

The clerk was no fool; he looked round about to see that no one could
overhear them, and said, 'Oh, yes, I can easily do that, but you must
not speak to anyone about it. It must be done in all secrecy, and the
priest must not know of it, otherwise I shall get into trouble, as it is
forbidden. It will also cost you something, as some very expensive books
are required.'

That did not matter at all, the man said; they would not care so very
much what it cost. The clerk could have a hundred dollars to begin with
to buy the books. He also promised to tell no one about it, and to bring
the calf round in the evening.

He gave the clerk the hundred dollars on the spot, and in the evening
took the calf round to him, and the clerk promised to do his best with
it. In a week's time he came back to the clerk to hear about the calf
and see how it was thriving. The clerk, however, said that he could not
get a sight of it, for then Peter would long after him and forget all
that he had already learned. He was getting on well with his learning,
but another hundred dollars were needed, as they must have more books.
The peasant had the money with him, so he gave it to the clerk, and went
home again with high hopes.

In another week the man came again to learn what progress Peter had made
now.

'He is getting on very well,' said the clerk.

'I suppose he can't say anything yet?' said the man.

'Oh, yes,' said the clerk, 'he can say "Moo" now.'

'Do you think he will get on with his learning?' asked the peasant.

'Oh, yes,' said the clerk, 'but I shall want another hundred dollars for
books. Peter can't learn well out of the ones that he has got.'

'Well, well,' said the man, 'what must be spent shall be spent.'

So he gave the clerk the third hundred dollars for books, and a cask of
good old ale for Peter. The clerk drank the ale himself, and gave the
calf milk, which he thought would be better for it.

Some weeks passed, during which the peasant did not come round to ask
after the calf, being frightened lest it should cost him another hundred
dollars, for he had begun to squirm a bit at having to part with so much
money. Meanwhile the clerk decided that the calf was as fat as it could
be, so he killed it. After he had got all the beef out of the way he
went inside, put on his black clothes, and made his way to the peasant's
house.

As soon as he had said 'Good-day' he asked, 'Has Peter come home here?'

'No, indeed, he hasn't,' said the man; 'surely he hasn't run away?'

'I hope,' said the clerk, 'that he would not behave so contemptibly
after all the trouble I have had to teach him, and all that I have spent
upon him. I have had to spend at least a hundred dollars of my own money
to buy books for him before I got him so far on. He could say anything
he liked now, so he said to-day that he longed to see his parents
again. I was willing to give him that pleasure, but I was afraid that he
wouldn't be able to find the way here by himself, so I made myself ready
to go with him. When we had got outside the house I remembered that I
had left my stick inside, and went in again to get it. When I came out
again Peter had gone off on his own account. I thought he would be here,
and if he isn't I don't know where he is.'

The peasant and his wife began to lament bitterly that Peter had run
away in this fashion just when they were to have so much joy of him, and
after they had spent so much on his education. The worst of it was that
now they had no heir after all. The clerk comforted them as best he
could; he also was greatly distressed that Peter should have behaved
in such a way just when he should have gained honour from his pupil.
Perhaps he had only gone astray, and he would advertise him at church
next Sunday, and find out where anyone had seen him. Then he bade them
'Good-bye,' and went home nad dined on a good fat veal roast.

Now it so happened that the clerk took in a newspaper, and one day he
chanced to read in its columns of a new merchant who had settled in
a town at some distance, and whose name was 'Peter Bull.' He put the
newspaper in his pocket, and went round to the sorrowing couple who had
lost their heir. He read the paragraph to them, and added, 'I wonder,
now, whether that could be your bull-calf Peter?'

'Yes, of course it is,' said the man; 'who else would it be?'

His wife then spoke up and said, 'You must set out, good man, and see
about him, for it is him, I am perfectly certain. Take a good sum of
money with you, too; for who knows but what he may want some cash now
that he has turned a merchant!'

Next day the man got a bag of money on his back and a sandwich in his
pocket, and his pipe in his mouth, and set out for the town where the
new merchant lived. It was no short way, and he travelled for many days
before he finally arrived there. He reached it one morning, just at
daybreak, found out the right place, and asked if the merchant was at
home. Yes, he was, said the people, but he was not up yet.

'That doesn't matter,' said the peasant, 'for I am his father. Just show
me up to his bedroom.'

He was shown up to the room, and as soon as he entered it, ad caught
sight of the merchant, he recognised him at once. He had the same broad
forehead, the same thick neck, and same red hair, but in other respects
he was now like a human being. The peasant rushed straight up to him
and took a firm hold of him. 'O Peter,' said he, 'what a sorrow you have
caused us, both myself and your mother, by running off like this just
as we had got you well educated! Get up, now, so that I can see you
properly, and have a talk with you.'

The merchant thought that it was a lunatic who had made his way in to
him, and thought it best to take things quietly.

'All right,' said he, 'I shall do so at once.' He got out of bed and
made haste to dress himself.

'Ay,' said the peasant, 'now I can see how clever our clerk is. He
has done well by you, for now you look just like a human being. If one
didn't know it, one would never think that it was you we got from the
red cow; will you come home with me now?'

'No,' said the merchant, 'I can't find time just now. I have a big
business to look after.'

'You could have the farm at once, you know,' said the peasant, 'and we
old people would retire. But if you would rather stay in business, of
course you may do so. Are you in want of anything?'

'Oh, yes,' said the merchant; 'I want nothing so much as money. A
merchant has always a use for that.'

'I can well believe that,' said the peasant, 'for you had nothing at all
to start with. I have brought some with me for that very end.' With
that he emptied his bag of money out upon the table, so that it was all
covered with bright dollars.

When the merchant saw what kind of man he had before him he began to
speak him fair, and invited him to stay with him for some days, so that
they might have some more talk together.

'Very well,' said the peasant, 'but you must call me "Father."'

'I have neither father nor mother alive,' said Peter Bull.

'I know that,' said the man; 'your real father was sold at Hamburg last
Michaelmas, and your real mother died while calving in spring; but my
wife and I have adopted you as our own, and you are our only heir, so
you must call me "Father."'

Peter Bull was quite willing to do so, and it was settled that he should
keep the money, while the peasant made his will and left to him all that
he had, before he went home to his wife, and told her the whole story.

She was delighted to hear that it was true enough about Peter Bull--that
he was no other than their own bull-calf.

'You must go at once and tell the clerk,' said she, 'and pay him the
hundred dollars of his own money that he spent upon our son. He has
earned them well, and more besides, for all the joy he has given us in
having such a son and heir.'

The man agreed with this, and thanked the clerk for all he had done, and
gave him two hundred dollars. Then he sold the farm, and removed with
his wife to the town where their dear son and heir was living. To him
they gave all their wealth, and lived with him till their dying day.

Three Brothers
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There was once a man who had three sons, and no other possessions
beyond the house in which he lived. Now the father loved his three sons
equally, so that he could not make up his mind which of them should have
the house after his death, because he did not wish to favour any one
more than the others. And he did not want to sell the house, because
it had belonged to his family for generations; otherwise he could have
divided the money equally amongst them. At last an idea struck him, and
he said to his sons: 'You must all go out into the world, and look about
you, and each learn a trade, and then, when you return, whoever can
produce the best masterpiece shall have the house.'

The sons were quite satisfied. The eldest wished to be a blacksmith, the
second a barber, and the third a fencing-master. They appointed a time
when they were to return home, and then they all set out.

It so happened that each found a good master, where he learnt all that
was necessary for his trade in the best possible way. The blacksmith had
to shoe the king's horses, and thought to himself, 'Without doubt the
house will be yours!' The barber shaved the best men in the kingdom,
and he, too, made sure that the house would be his. The fencing-master
received many a blow, but he set his teeth, and would not allow himself
to be troubled by them, for he thought to himself, 'If you are afraid of
a blow you will never get the house.'

When the appointed time had come the three brothers met once more, and
they sat down and discussed the best opportunity of showing off their
skill. Just then a hare came running across the field towards them.
'Look!' said the barber, 'here comes something in the nick of time!'
seized basin and soap, made a lather whilst the hare was approaching,
and then, as it ran at full tilt, shaved its moustaches, without cutting
it or injuring a single hair on its body.

'I like that very much indeed,' said the father. 'Unless the others
exert themselves to the utmost, the house will be yours.'

Soon after they saw a man driving a carriage furiously towards them.
'Now, father, you shall see what I can do!' said the blacksmith, and he
sprang after the carriage, tore off the four shoes of the horse as
it was going at the top of its speed, and shod it with four new ones
without checking its pace.

'You are a clever fellow!' said the father, 'and know your trade as well
as your brother. I really don't know to which of you I shall give the
house.'

Then the third son said, 'Father, let me also show you something;' and,
as it was beginning to rain, he drew his sword and swung it in cross
cuts above his head, so that not a drop fell on him, and the rain fell
heavier and heavier, till at last it was coming down like a waterspout,
but he swung his sword faster and faster, and kept as dry as if he were
under cover.

When the father saw this he was astonished, and said, 'You have produced
the greatest masterpiece: the house is yours.'

Both the other brothers were quite satisfied, and praised him too, and
as they were so fond of each other they all three remained at home and
plied their trades: and as they were so experienced and skilful they
earned a great deal of money. So they lived happily together till they
were quite old, and when one was taken ill and died the two others were
so deeply grieved that they were also taken ill and died too. And so,
because they had all been so clever, and so fond of each other, they
were all laid in one grave.
Shirt-collar
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There was once a fine gentleman whose entire worldly possessions
consisted of a boot-jack and a hair-brush; but he had the most beautiful
shirt-collar in the world, and it is about this that we are going to
hear a story.

The shirt-collar was so old that he began to think about marrying;
and it happened one day that he and a garter came into the wash-tub
together.

'Hulloa!' said the shirt-collar, 'never before have I seen anything so
slim and delicate, so elegant and pretty! May I be permitted to ask your
name?'

'I shan't tell you,' said the garter.

'Where is the place of your abode?' asked the shirt-collar.

But the garter was of a bashful disposition, and did not think it proper
to answer.

'Perhaps you are a girdle?' said the shirt-collar, 'an under girdle? for
I see that you are for use as well as for ornament, my pretty miss!'

'You ought not to speak to me!' said the garter' 'I'm sure I haven't
given you any encouragement!'

'When anyone is as beautiful as you,' said the shirt-collar, 'is not
that encouragement enough?'

'Go away, don't come so close!' said the garter. 'You seem to be a
gentleman!'

'So I am, and a very fine one too!' said the shirt-collar; 'I possess a
boot-jack and a hair-brush!'

That was not true; it was his master who owned these things; but he was
a terrible boaster.

'Don't come so close,' said the garter. 'I'm not accustomed to such
treatment!'

'What affectation!' said the shirt-collar. And then they were taken out
of the wash-tub, starched, and hung on a chair in the sun to dry, and
then laid on the ironing-board. Then came the glowing iron.

'Mistress widow!' said the shirt-collar, 'dear mistress widow! I am
becoming another man, all my creases are coming out; you are burning a
hole in me! Ugh! Stop, I implore you!'

'You rag!' said the iron, travelling proudly over the shirt-collar, for
it thought it was a steam engine and ought to be at the station drawing
trucks.

'Rag!' it said.

The shirt-collar was rather frayed out at the edge, so the scissors came
to cut off the threads.

'Oh!' said the shirt-collar, 'you must be a dancer! How high you can
kick! That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen! No man can
imitate you!'

'I know that!' said the scissors.

'You ought to be a duchess!' said the shirt-collar. 'My worldly
possessions consist of a fine gentleman, a boot-jack, and a hair-brush.
If only I had a duchy!'

'What! He wants to marry me?' said the scissors, and she was so angry
that she gave the collar a sharp snip, so that it had to be cast aside
as good for nothing.

'Well, I shall have to propose to the hair-brush!' thought the
shirt-collar. 'It is really wonderful what fine hair you have, madam!
Have you never thought of marrying?'

'Yes, that I have!' answered the hair-brush; 'I'm engaged to the
boot-jack!'

'Engaged!' exclaimed the shirt-collar. And now there was no one he could
marry, so he took to despising matrimony.

Time passed, and the shirt-collar came in a rag-bag to the paper-mill.
There was a large assortment of rags, the fine ones in one heap, and the
coarse ones in another, as they should be. They had all much to tell,
but no one more than the shirt-collar, for he was a hopeless braggart.

'I have had a terrible number of love affairs!' he said. 'They give me
no peace. I was such a fine gentleman, so stiff with starch! I had a
boot-jack and a hair-brush, which I never used! You should just have
seen me then! Never shall I forget my first love! She was a girdle, so
delicate and soft and pretty! She threw herself into a wash-tub for my
sake! Then there was a widow, who glowed with love for me. But I
left her alone, till she became black. Then there was the dancer, who
inflicted the wound which has caused me to be here now; she was very
violent! My own hair-brush was in love with me, and lost all her hair
in consequence. Yes, I have experienced much in that line; but I grieve
most of all for the garter,-I mean, the girdle, who threw herself into a
wash-tub. I have much on my conscience; it is high time for me to become
white paper!'

And so he did! he became white paper, the very paper on which this story
is printed. And that was because he had boasted so terribly about things
which were not true. We should take this to heart, so that it may not
happen to us, for we cannot indeed tell if we may not some day come to
the rag-bag, and be made into white paper, on which will be printed our
whole history, even the most secret parts, so that we too go about the
world relating it, like the shirt-collar.
Snowman
Category: Love Letters
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How astonishingly cold it is! My body is cracking all over!' said the
Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that
fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting.
'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall keep quite cool and
collected.'

Instead of eyes he had two large three-cornered pieces of slate in his
head; his mouth consisted of an old rake, so that he had teeth as well.

He was born amidst the shouts and laughter of the boys, and greeted by
the jingling bells and cracking whips of the sledges.

The sun went down, the full moon rose, large, round, clear and
beautiful, in the dark blue sky.

'There it is again on the other side!' said the Snow-man, by which he
meant the sun was appearing again. 'I have become quite accustomed to
its glaring. I hope it will hang there and shine, so that I may be
able to see myself. I wish I knew, though, how one ought to see about
changing one's position. I should very much like to move about. If I
only could, I would glide up and down the ice there, as I saw the boys
doing; but somehow or other, I don't know how to run.'

'Bow-wow!' barked the old yard-dog; he was rather hoarse and couldn't
bark very well. His hoarseness came on when he was a house-dog and used
to lie in front of the stove. 'The sun will soon teach you to run! I saw
that last winter with your predecessor, and farther back still with his
predecessors! They have all run away!'

'I don't understand you, my friend,' said the Snow-man. 'That thing up
there is to teach me to run?' He meant the moon. 'Well, it certainly did
run just now, for I saw it quite plainly over there, and now here it is
on this side.'

'You know nothing at all about it,' said the yard-dog. 'Why, you have
only just been made. The thing you see there is the moon; the other
thing you saw going down the other side was the sun. He will come up
again tomorrow morning, and will soon teach you how to run away down the
gutter. The weather is going to change; I feel it already by the pain in
my left hind-leg; the weather is certainly going to change.'

'I can't understand him,' said the Snow-man; 'but I have an idea that he
is speaking of something unpleasant. That thing that glares so, and then
disappears, the sun, as he calls it, is not my friend. I know that by
instinct.'

'Bow-wow!' barked the yard-dog, and walked three times round himself,
and then crept into his kennel to sleep. The weather really did change.
Towards morning a dense damp fog lay over the whole neighbourhood; later
on came an icy wind, which sent the frost packing. But when the sun
rose, it was a glorious sight. The trees and shrubs were covered with
rime, and looked like a wood of coral, and every branch was thick with
long white blossoms. The most delicate twigs, which are lost among the
foliage in summer-time, came now into prominence, and it was like a
spider's web of glistening white. The lady-birches waved in the wind;
and when the sun shone, everything glittered and sparkled as if it were
sprinkled with diamond dust, and great diamonds were lying on the snowy
carpet.

'Isn't it wonderful?' exclaimed a girl who was walking with a young
man in the garden. They stopped near the Snow-man, and looked at the
glistening trees. 'Summer cannot show a more beautiful sight,' she said,
with her eyes shining.

'And one can't get a fellow like this in summer either,' said the young
man, pointing to the Snow-man. 'He's a beauty!'

The girl laughed, and nodded to the Snow-man, and then they both danced
away over the snow.

'Who were those two?' asked the Snow-man of the yard-dog. 'You have been
in this yard longer than I have. Do you know who they are?'

'Do I know them indeed?' answered the yard-dog. 'She has often stroked
me, and he has given me bones. I don't bite either of them!'

'But what are they?' asked the Snow-man.

'Lovers!' replied the yard-dog. 'They will go into one kennel and gnaw
the same bone!'

'Are they the same kind of beings that we are?' asked the Snow-man.

'They are our masters,' answered the yard-dog. 'Really people who have
only been in the world one day know very little.' That's the conclusion
I have come to. Now I have age and wisdom; I know everyone in the house,
and I can remember a time when I was not lying here in a cold kennel.
Bow-wow!'

'The cold is splendid,' said the Snow-man. 'Tell me some more. But don't
rattle your chain so, it makes me crack!'

'Bow-wow!' barked the yard-dog. 'They used to say I was a pretty little
fellow; then I lay in a velvet-covered chair in my master's house. My
mistress used to nurse me, and kiss and fondle me, and call me her dear,
sweet little Alice! But by-and-by I grew too big, and I was given to the
housekeeper, and I went into the kitchen. You can see into it from where
you are standing; you can look at the room in which I was master, for so
I was when I was with the housekeeper. Of course it was a smaller place
than upstairs, but it was more comfortable, for I wasn't chased about
and teased by the children as I had been before. My food was just as
good, or even better. I had my own pillow, and there was a stove there,
which at this time of year is the most beautiful thing in the world. I
used to creep right under that stove. Ah me! I often dream of that stove
still! Bow-wow!'

'Is a stove so beautiful?' asked the Snow-man. 'Is it anything like me?'

'It is just the opposite of you! It is coal-black, and has a long neck
with a brass pipe. It eats firewood, so that fire spouts out of its
mouth. One has to keep close beside it-quite underneath is the nicest of
all. You can see it through the window from where you are standing.'

And the Snow-man looked in that direction, and saw a smooth polished
object with a brass pipe. The flicker from the fire reached him across
the snow. The Snow-man felt wonderfully happy, and a feeling came over
him which he could not express; but all those who are not snow-men know
about it.

'Why did you leave her?' asked the Snow-man. He had a feeling that such
a being must be a lady. 'How could you leave such a place?'

'I had to!' said the yard-dog. 'They turned me out of doors, and chained
me up here. I had bitten the youngest boy in the leg, because he took
away the bone I was gnawing; a bone for a bone, I thought! But they were
very angry, and from that time I have been chained here, and I have lost
my voice. Don't you hear how hoarse I am? Bow-wow! I can't speak like
other dogs. Bow-wow! That was the end of happiness!'

The Snow-man, however, was not listening to him any more; he was looking
into the room where the housekeeper lived, where the stove stood on its
four iron legs, and seemed to be just the same size as the Snow-man.

'How something is cracking inside me!' he said. 'Shall I never be able
to get in there? It is certainly a very innocent wish, and our innocent
wishes ought to be fulfilled. I must get there, and lean against the
stove, if I have to break the window first!'

'You will never get inside there!' said the yard-dog; 'and if you were
to reach the stove you would disappear. Bow-wow!'

'I'm as good as gone already!' answered the Snow-man. 'I believe I'm
breaking up!'

The whole day the Snow-man looked through the window; towards dusk the
room grew still more inviting; the stove gave out a mild light, not at
all like the moon or even the sun; no, as only a stove can shine, when
it has something to feed upon. When the door of the room was open, it
flared up-this was one of its peculiarities; it flickered quite red upon
the Snow-man's white face.

'I can't stand it any longer!' he said. 'How beautiful it looks with its
tongue stretched out like that!'

It was a long night, but the Snow-man did not find it so; there he
stood, wrapt in his pleasant thoughts, and they froze, so that he
cracked.

Next morning the panes of the kitchen window were covered with ice, and
the most beautiful ice-flowers that even a snow-man could desire, only
they blotted out the stove. The window would not open; he couldn't see
the stove which he thought was such a lovely lady. There was a cracking
and cracking inside him and all around; there was just such a frost as a
snow-man would delight in. But this Snow-man was different: how could he
feel happy?

'Yours is a bad illness for a Snow-man!' said the yard-dog. 'I also
suffered from it, but I have got over it. Bow-wow!' he barked. 'The
weather is going to change!' he added.

The weather did change. There came a thaw.

When this set in the Snow-man set off. He did not say anything, and he
did not complain, and those are bad signs.

One morning he broke up altogether. And lo! where he had stood there
remained a broomstick standing upright, round which the boys had built
him!

'Ah! now I understand why he loved the stove,' said the yard-dog.
'That is the raker they use to clean out the stove! The Snow-man had a
stove-raker in his body! That's what was the matter with him! And now
it's all over with him! Bow-wow!'

And before long it was all over with the winter too! 'Bow-wow!' barked
the hoarse yard-dog.

But the young girl sang:

     Woods, your bright green garments don!
     Willows, your woolly gloves put on!
     Lark and cuckoo, daily sing--     February has brought the spring!
     My heart joins in your song so sweet;
     Come out, dear sun, the world to greet!

And no one thought of the Snow-man.
Flying Trunk
Category: Love Letters
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There was once a merchant who was so rich that he could have paved
the whole street, and perhaps even a little side-street besides, with
silver. But he did not do that; he knew another way of spending his
money. If he spent a shilling he got back a florin-such an excellent
merchant he was till he died.

Now his son inherited all this money. He lived very merrily; he went
every night to the theatre, made paper kites out of five-pound notes,
and played ducks and drakes with sovereigns instead of stones. In this
way the money was likely to come soon to an end, and so it did.

At last he had nothing left but four shillings, and he had no clothes
except a pair of slippers and an old dressing-gown.

His friends did not trouble themselves any more about him; they would
not even walk down the street with him.

But one of them who was rather good-natured sent him an old trunk with
the message, 'Pack up!" That was all very well, but he had nothing to
pack up, so he got into the trunk himself.

It was an enchanted trunk, for as soon as the lock was pressed it could
fly. He pressed it, and away he flew in it up the chimney, high into the
clouds, further and further away. But whenever the bottom gave a little
creak he was in terror lest the trunk should go to pieces, for then he
would have turned a dreadful somersault-just think of it!

In this way he arrived at the land of the Turks. He hid the trunk in a
wood under some dry leaves, and then walked into the town. He could
do that quite well, for all the Turks were dressed just as he was-in a
dressing-gown and slippers.

He met a nurse with a little child.

'Halloa! you Turkish nurse,' said he, 'what is that great castle there
close to the town? The one with the windows so high up?'

'The sultan's daughter lives there,' she replied. 'It is prophesied that
she will be very unlucky in her husband, and so no one is allowed to see
her except when the sultan and sultana are by.'

'Thank you,' said the merchant's son, and he went into the wood, sat
himself in his trunk, flew on to the roof, and crept through the window
into the princess's room.

She was lying on the sofa asleep, and was so beautiful that the young
merchant had to kiss her. Then she woke up and was very much frightened,
but he said he was a Turkish god who had come through the air to see
her, and that pleased her very much.

They sat close to each other, and he told her a story about her eyes.
They were beautiful dark lakes in which her thoughts swam about like
mermaids. And her forehead was a snowy mountain, grand and shining.
These were lovely stories.

Then he asked the princess to marry him, and she said yes at once.

'But you must come here on Saturday,' she said, 'for then the sultan and
the sultana are coming to tea with me. They will be indeed proud that
I receive the god of the Turks. But mind you have a really good story
ready, for my parents like them immensely. My mother likes something
rather moral and high-flown, and my father likes something merry to make
him laugh.'

'Yes, I shall only bring a fairy story for my dowry,' said he, and so
they parted. But the princess gave him a sabre set with gold pieces
which he could use.

Then he flew away, bought himself a new dressing-gown, and sat down
in the wood and began to make up a story, for it had to be ready by
Saturday, and that was no easy matter.

When he had it ready it was Saturday.

The sultan, the sultana, and the whole court were at tea with the
princess.

He was most graciously received.

'Will you tell us a story?' said the sultana; 'one that is thoughtful
and instructive?'

'But something that we can laugh at,' said the sultan.

'Oh, certainly,' he replied, and began: 'Now, listen attentively. There
was once a box of matches which lay between a tinder-box and an old iron
pot, and they told the story of their youth.

'"We used to be on the green fir-boughs. Every morning and evening
we had diamond-tea, which was the dew, and the whole day long we had
sunshine, and the little birds used to tell us stories. We were very
rich, because the other trees only dressed in summer, but we had green
dresses in summer and in winter. Then the woodcutter came, and our
family was split up. We have now the task of making light for the lowest
people. That is why we grand people are in the kitchen."

'"My fate was quite different," said the iron pot, near which the
matches lay.

'"Since I came into the world I have been many times scoured, and have
cooked much. My only pleasure is to have a good chat with my companions
when I am lying nice and clean in my place after dinner."

'"Now you are talking too fast," spluttered the fire.

'"Yes, let us decide who is the grandest!" said the matches.

'"No, I don't like talking about myself," said the pot.

'"Let us arrange an evening's entertainment. I will tell the story of my
life.

'"On the Baltic by the Danish shore-"

'What a beautiful beginning!" said all the plates. "That's a story that
will please us all."

'And the end was just as good as the beginning. All the plates clattered
for joy.

'"Now I will dance," said the tongs, and she danced. Oh! how high she
could kick!

'The old chair-cover in the corner split when he saw her.

'The urn would have sung but she said she had a cold; she could not sing
unless she boiled.

'In the window was an old quill pen. There was nothing remarkable about
her except that she had been dipped too deeply into the ink. But she was
very proud of that.

'"If the urn will not sing," said she, "outside the door hangs a
nightingale in a cage who will sing."

'"I don't think it's proper," said the kettle, "that such a foreign bird
should be heard."

'"Oh, let us have some acting," said everyone. "Do let us!"

'Suddenly the door opened and the maid came in. Everyone was quite
quiet. There was not a sound. But each pot knew what he might have done,
and how grand he was.

'The maid took the matches and lit the fire with them. How they
spluttered and flamed, to be sure! "Now everyone can see," they thought,
"that we are the grandest! How we sparkle! What a light-"

'But here they were burnt out.'

'That was a delightful story!' said the sultana. 'I quite feel myself in
the kitchen with the matches. Yes, now you shall marry our daughter.'

'Yes, indeed,' said the sultan, 'you shall marry our daughter on
Monday.' And they treated the young man as one of the family.

The wedding was arranged, and the night before the whole town was
illuminated.

Biscuits and gingerbreads were thrown among the people, the street boys
stood on tiptoe crying hurrahs and whistling through their fingers. It
was all splendid.

'Now I must also give them a treat,' thought the merchant's son. And
so he bought rockets, crackers, and all the kinds of fireworks you can
think of, put them in his trunk, and flew up with them into the air.

Whirr-r-r, how they fizzed and blazed!

All the Turks jumped so high that their slippers flew above their heads;
such a splendid glitter they had never seen before.

Now they could quite well understand that it was the god of the Turks
himself who was to marry the princess.

As soon as the young merchant came down again into the wood with his
trunk he thought, 'Now I will just go into the town to see how the show
has taken.'

And it was quite natural that he should want to do this.

Oh! what stories the people had to tell!

Each one whom he asked had seen it differently, but they had all found
it beautiful.

'I saw the Turkish god himself,' said one. 'He had eyes like glittering
stars, and a beard like foaming water.'

'He flew away in a cloak of fire,' said another. They were splendid
things that he heard, and the next day was to be his wedding day.

Then he went back into the wood to sit in his trunk; but what had become
of it? The trunk had been burnt. A spark of the fireworks had set it
alight, and the trunk was in ashes. He could no longer fly, and could
never reach his bride.

She stood the whole day long on the roof and waited; perhaps she is
waiting there still.

But he wandered through the world and told stories; though they are not
so merry as the one he told about the matches.


Slaying of the Tanuki
Category: Love Letters
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Near a big river, and between two high mountains, a man and his wife
lived in a cottage a long, long time ago. A dense forest lay all round
the cottage, and there was hardly a path or a tree in the whole wood
that was not familiar to the peasant from his boyhood. In one of his
wanderings he had made friends with a hare, and many an hour the two
passed together, when the man was resting by the roadside, eating his
dinner.

Now this strange friendship was observed by the Tanuki, a wicked,
quarrelsome beast, who hated the peasant, and was never tired of doing
him an ill turn. Again and again he had crept to the hut, and finding
some choice morsel put away for the little hare, had either eaten it if
he thought it nice, or trampled it to pieces so that no one else should
get it, and at last the peasant lost patience, and made up his mind he
would have the Tanuki's blood.

So for many days the man lay hidden, waiting for the Tanuki to come by,
and when one morning he marched up the road thinking of nothing but the
dinner he was going to steal, the peasant threw himself upon him and
bound his four legs tightly, so that he could not move. Then he dragged
his enemy joyfully to the house, feeling that at length he had got the
better of the mischievous beast which had done him so many ill turns.
'He shall pay for them with his skin,' he said to his wife. 'We will
first kill him, and then cook him.' So saying, he hanged the Tanuki,
head downwards, to a beam, and went out to gather wood for a fire.

Meanwhile the old woman was standing at the mortar pounding the rise
that was to serve them for the week with a pestle that made her arms
ache with its weight. Suddenly she heard something whining and weeping
in the corner, and, stopping her work, she looked round to see what it
was. That was all that the rascal wanted, and he put on directly his
most humble air, and begged the woman in his softest voice to loosen his
bonds, which her hurting him sorely. She was filled with pity for him,
but did not dare to set him free, as she knew that her husband would be
very angry. The Tanuki, however, did not despair, and seeing that her
heart was softened, began his prayers anew. 'He only asked to have his
bonds taken from him,' he said. 'He would give his word not to attempt
to escape, and if he was once set free he could soon pound her rice for
her.' 'Then you can have a little rest,' he went on, 'for rice pounding
is very tiring work, and not at all fit for weak women.' These last
words melted the good woman completely, and she unfastened the bonds
that held him. Poor foolish creature! In one moment the Tanuki had
seized her, stripped off all her clothes, and popped her in the mortar.
In a few minutes more she was pounded as fine as the rice; and not
content with that, the Tanuki placed a pot on the hearth and made ready
to cook the peasant a dinner from the flesh of his own wife!

When everything was complete he looked out of the door, and saw the old
man coming from the forest carrying a large bundle of wood. Quick as
lightning the Tanuki not only put on the woman's clothes, but, as he was
a magician, assumed her form as well. Then he took the wood, kindled the
fire, and very soon set a large dinner before the old man, who was very
hungry, and had forgotten for the moment all about his enemy. But when
the Tanuki saw that he had eaten his fill and would be thinking about
his prisoner, he hastily shook off the clothes behind a door and took
his own shape. Then he said to the peasant, 'You are a nice sort of
person to seize animals and to talk of killing them! You are caught in
your own net. It is your own wife that you have eaten, and if you want
to find her bones you have only to look under the floor.' With these
words he turned and made for the forest.

The old peasant grew cold with horror as he listened, and seemed frozen
to the place where he stood. When he had recovered himself a little,
he collected the bones of his dead wife, buried them in the garden, and
swore over the grave to be avenged on the Tanuki. After everything was
done he sat himself down in his lonely cottage and wept bitterly, and
the bitterest thought of all was that he would never be able to forget
that he had eaten his own wife.

While he was thus weeping and wailing his friend the hare passed by,
and, hearing the noise, pricked up his ears and soon recognised the old
man's voice. He wondered what had happened, and put his head in at the
door and asked if anything was the matter. With tears and groans the
peasant told him the whole dreadful story, and the hare, filled with
anger and compassion, comforted him as best he could, and promised to
help him in his revenge. 'The false knave shall not go unpunished,' said
he.

So the first thing he did was to search the house for materials to make
an ointment, which he sprinkled plentifully with pepper and then put in
his pocket. Next he took a hatchet, bade farewell to the old man, and
departed to the forest. He bent his steps to the dwelling of the Tanuki
and knocked at the door. The Tanuki, who had no cause to suspect the
hare, was greatly pleased to see him, for he noticed the hatchet at
once, and began to lay plots how to get hold of it.

To do this he thought he had better offer to accompany the hare, which
was exactly what the hare wished and expected, for he knew all the
Tanuki's cunning, and understood his little ways. So he accepted the
rascal's company with joy, and made himself very pleasant as they
strolled along. When they were wandering in this manner through the
forest the hare carelessly raised his hatchet in passing, and cut down
some thick boughs that were hanging over the path, but at length,
after cutting down a good big tree, which cost him many hard blows, he
declared that it was too heavy for him to carry home, and he must just
leave it where it was. This delighted the greedy Tanuki, who said that
they would be no weight for him, so they collected the large branches,
which the hare bound tightly on his back. Then he trotted gaily to the
house, the hare following after with his lighter bundle.

By this time the hare had decided what he would do, and as soon as they
arrived, he quietly set on fire the wood on the back of the Tanuki. The
Tanuki, who was busy with something else, observed nothing, and only
called out to ask what was the meaning of the crackling that he heard.
'It is just the rattle of the stones which are rolling down the side of
the mountain,' the hare said; and the Tanuki was content, and made no
further remarks, never noticing that the noise really sprang from the
burning boughs on his back, until his fur was in flames, and it was
almost too late to put it out. Shrieking with pain, he let fall the
burning wood from his back, and stamped and howled with agony. But the
hare comforted him, and told him that he always carried with him an
excellent plaster in case of need, which would bring him instant relief,
and taking out his ointment he spread it on a leaf of bamboo, and
laid it on the wound. No sooner did it touch him than the Tanuki leapt
yelling into the air, and the hare laughed, and ran to tell his friend
the peasant what a trick he had played on their enemy. But the old man
shook his head sadly, for he knew that the villain was only crushed for
the moment, and that he would shortly be revenging himself upon them.
No, the only way every to get any peace and quiet was to render the
Tanuki harmless for ever. Long did the old man and the hare puzzle
together how this was to be done, and at last they decided that they
would make two boats, a small one of wood and a large one of clay. Then
they fell to work at once, and when the boats were ready and properly
painted, the hare went to the Tanuki, who was still very ill, and
invited him to a great fish-catching. The Tanuki was still feeling angry
with the hare about the trick he had played him, but he was weak and
very hungry, so he gladly accepted the proposal, and accompanied the
hare to the bank of the river, where the two boats were moored, rocked
by the waves. They both looked exactly alike, and the Tanuki only saw
that one was bigger than the other, and would hold more fish, so he
sprang into the large one, while the hare climbed into the one which was
made of wood. They loosened their moorings, and made for the middle of
the stream, and when they were at some distance from the bank, the hare
took his oar, and struck such a heavy blow at the other boat, that it
broke in two. The Tanuki fell straight into the water, and was held
there by the hare till he was quite dead. Then he put the body in his
boat and rowed to land, and told the old man that his enemy was dead at
last. And the old man rejoiced that his wife was avenged, and he took
the hare into his house, and they lived together all their days in peace
and quietness upon the mountain.
Turtle
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There was once a worthy old couple who lived on the coast, and supported
themselves by fishing. They had only one child, a son, who was their
pride and joy, and for his sake they were ready to work hard all day
long, and never felt tired or discontented with their lot. This son's
name was Uraschimataro, which means in Japanese, 'Son of the island,'
and he was a fine well-grown youth and a good fisherman, minding neither
wind nor weather. Not the bravest sailor in the whole village dared
venture so far out to sea as Uraschimataro, and many a time the
neighbours used to shake their heads and say to his parents, 'If your
son goes on being so rash, one day he will try his luck once too often,
and the waves will end by swallowing him up.' But Uraschimataro paid no
heed to these remarks, and as he was really very clever in managing a
boat, the old people were very seldom anxious about him.

One beautiful bright morning, as he was hauling his well-filled nets
into the boat, he saw lying among the fishes a tiny little turtle. He
was delighted with his prize, and threw it into a wooden vessel to
keep till he got home, when suddenly the turtle found its voice, and
tremblingly begged for its life. 'After all,' it said, 'what good can
I do you? I am so young and small, and I would so gladly live a little
longer. Be merciful and set me free, and I shall know how to prove my
gratitude.'

Now Uraschimataro was very good-natured, and besides, he could never
bear to say no, so he picked up the turtle, and put it back into the
sea.

Years flew by, and every morning Uraschimataro sailed his boat into the
deep sea. But one day as he was making for a little bay between some
rocks, there arose a fierce whirlwind, which shattered his boat to
pieces, and she was sucked under by the waves. Uraschimataro himself
very nearly shared the same fate. But he was a powerful swimmer, and
struggled hard to reach the shore. Then he saw a large turtle coming
towards him, and above the howling of the storm he heard what it said:
'I am the turtle whose life you once saved. I will now pay my debt and
show my gratitude. The land is still far distant, and without my help
you would never get there. Climb on my back, and I will take you where
you will.' Uraschimataro did not wait to be asked twice, and thankfully
accepted his friend's help. But scarcely was he seated firmly on the
shell, when the turtle proposed that they should not return to the shore
at once, but go under the sea, and look at some of the wonders that lay
hidden there.

Uraschimataro agreed willingly, and in another moment they were deep,
deep down, with fathoms of blue water above their heads. Oh, how quickly
they darted through the still, warm sea! The young man held tight, and
marvelled where they were going and how long they were to travel, but
for three days they rushed on, till at last the turtle stopped before
a splendid palace, shining with gold and silver, crystal and precious
stones, and decked here and there with branches of pale pink coral and
glittering pearls. But if Uraschimataro was astonished at the beauty of
the outside, he was struck dumb at the sight of the hall within, which
was lighted by the blaze of fish scales.

'Where have you brought me?' he asked his guide in a low voice.

'To the palace of Ringu, the house of the sea god, whose subjects we all
are,' answered the turtle. 'I am the first waiting maid of his daughter,
the lovely princess Otohime, whom you will shortly see.'

Uraschimataro was still so puzzled with the adventures that had befallen
him, that he waited in a dazed condition for what would happen next. But
the turtle, who had talked so much of him to the princess that she had
expressed a wish to see him, went at once to make known his arrival.
And directly the princess beheld him her heart was set on him, and she
begged him to stay with her, and in return promised that he should never
grow old, neither should his beauty fade. 'Is not that reward enough?'
she asked, smiling, looking all the while as fair as the sun itself. And
Uraschimataro said 'Yes,' and so he stayed there. For how long? That he
only knew later.

His life passed by, and each hour seemed happier than the last, when
one day there rushed over him a terrible longing to see his parents. He
fought against it hard, knowing how it would grieve the princess, but it
grew on him stronger and stronger, till at length he became so sad that
the princess inquired what was wrong. Then he told her of the longing he
had to visit his old home, and that he must see his parents once more.
The princess was almost frozen with horror, and implored him to stay
with her, or something dreadful would be sure to happen. 'You will never
come back, and we shall meet again no more,' she moaned bitterly. But
Uraschimataro stood firm and repeated, 'Only this once will I leave you,
and then will I return to your side for ever.' Sadly the princess shook
her head, but she answered slowly, 'One way there is to bring you safely
back, but I fear you will never agree to the conditions of the bargain.'

'I will do anything that will bring me back to you,' exclaimed
Uraschimataro, looking at her tenderly, but the princess was silent: she
knew too well that when he left her she would see his face no more. Then
she took from a shelf a tiny golden box, and gave it to Uraschimataro,
praying him to keep it carefully, and above all things never to open it.
'If you can do this,' she said as she bade him farewell, 'your friend
the turtle will meet you at the shore, and will carry you back to me.'

Uraschimataro thanked her from his heart, and swore solemnly to do her
bidding. He hid the box safely in his garments, seated himself on the
back of the turtle, and vanished in the ocean path, waving his hand to
the princess. Three days and three nights they swam through the sea, and
at length Uraschimataro arrived at the beach which lay before his old
home. The turtle bade him farewell, and was gone in a moment.

Uraschimataro drew near to the village with quick and joyful steps.
He saw the smoke curling through the roof, and the thatch where green
plants had thickly sprouted. He heard the children shouting and calling,
and from a window that he passed came the twang of the koto, and
everything seemed to cry a welcome for his return. Yet suddenly he
felt a pang at his heart as he wandered down the street. After all,
everything was changed. Neither men nor houses were those he once knew.
Quickly he saw his old home; yes, it was still there, but it had a
strange look. Anxiously he knocked at the door, and asked the woman who
opened it after his parents. But she did not know their names, and could
give him no news of them.

Still more disturbed, he rushed to the burying ground, the only place
that could tell him what he wished to know. Here at any rate he would
find out what it all meant. And he was right. In a moment he stood
before the grave of his parents, and the date written on the stone
was almost exactly the date when they had lost their son, and he had
forsaken them for the Daughter of the Sea. And so he found that since he
had deft his home, three hundred years had passed by.


Shuddering with horror at his discovery he turned back into the village
street, hoping to meet some one who could tell him of the days of old.
But when the man spoke, he knew he was not dreaming, though he felt as
if he had lost his senses.

In despair he bethought him of the box which was the gift of the
princess. Perhaps after all this dreadful thing was not true. He
might be the victim of some enchanter's spell, and in his hand lay the
counter-charm. Almost unconsciously he opened it, and a purple vapour
came pouring out. He held the empty box in his hand, and as he looked he
saw that the fresh hand of youth had grown suddenly shrivelled, like the
hand of an old, old man. He ran to the brook, which flowed in a clear
stream down from the mountain. and saw himself reflected as in a mirror.
It was the face of a mummy which looked back at him. Wounded to death,
he crept back through the village, and no man knew the old, old man to
be the strong handsome youth who had run down the street an hour before.
So he toiled wearily back, till he reached the shore, and here he sat
sadly on a rock, and called loudly on the turtle. But she never came
back any more, but instead, death came soon, and set him free. But
before that happened, the people who saw him sitting lonely on the shore
had heard his story, and when their children were restless they used to
tell them of the good son who from love to his parents had given up for
their sakes the splendour and wonders of the palace in the sea, and the
most beautiful woman in the world besides.
Wood Cutter
Category: Love Letters
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A poor woodcutter lived with his wife and three daughters in a little
hut on the borders of a great forest.

One morning as he was going to his work, he said to his wife, 'Let our
eldest daughter bring me my lunch into the wood; and so that she shall
not lose her way, I will take a bag of millet with me, and sprinkle the
seed on the path.'

When the sun had risen high over the forest, the girl set out with a
basin of soup. But the field and wood sparrows, the larks and finches,
blackbirds and green finches had picked up the millet long ago, and the
girl could not find her way.

She went on and on, till the sun set and night came on. The trees
rustled in the darkness, the owls hooted, and she began to be very much
frightened. Then she saw in tile distance a light that twinkled between
the trees. 'There must be people living yonder,' she thought, 'who will
take me in for the night,' and she began walking towards it.

Not long afterwards she came to a house with lights in the windows.

She knocked at the door, and a gruff voice called, 'Come in!'

The girl stepped into the dark entrance, and tapped at the door of the
room.

'Just walk in,' cried the voice, and when she opened the door there sat
an old gray-haired man at the table. His face was resting on his hands,
and his white beard flowed over the table almost down to the ground.

By the stove lay three beasts, a hen, a cock, and a brindled cow. The
girl told the old man her story, and asked for a night's lodging.

The man said:

     Pretty cock,
     Pretty hen,
     And you, pretty brindled cow,
     What do you say now?

'Duks,' answered the beasts; and that must have meant, 'We are quite
willing,' for the old man went on, 'Here is abundance; go into the back
kitchen and cook us a supper.'

The girl found plenty of everything in the kitchen, and cooked a good
meal, but she did not think of the beasts.

She placed the full dishes on the table, sat down opposite the
gray-haired man, and ate till her hunger was appeased.

When she was satisfied, she said, 'But now I am so tired, where is a bed
in which I can sleep? '

The beasts answered:

     You have eaten with him,
     You have drunk with him,
     Of us you have not thought,
     Sleep then as you ought!

Then the old man said, 'Go upstairs, and there you will find a bedroom;
shake the bed, and put clean sheets on, and go to sleep.'

The maiden went upstairs, and when she had made the bed, she lay down.

After some time the gray-haired man came, looked at her by the light
of his candle, and shook his head. And when he saw that she was sound
asleep, he opened a trapdoor and let her fall into the cellar.

The woodcutter came home late in the evening, and reproached his wife
for leaving him all day without food.

'No, I did not,' she answered; 'the girl went off with your dinner. She
must have lost her way, but will no doubt come back to-morrow.'

But at daybreak the woodcutter started off into the wood, and this time
asked his second daughter to bring his food.

'I will take a bag of lentils,' said he; 'they are larger than millet,
and the girl will see them better and be sure to find her way.'

At midday the maiden took the food, but the lentils had all gone; as on
the previous day, the wood birds had eaten them all.

The maiden wandered about the wood till nightfall, when she came in
the same way to the old man's house, and asked for food and a night's
lodging.

The man with the white hair again asked the beasts:

     Pretty cock,
     Pretty hen,
     And you, pretty brindled cow,
     What do you say now?

The beasts answered, 'Duks,' and everything happened as on the former
day.

The girl cooked a good meal, ate and drank with the old man, and did not
trouble herself about the animals.

And when she asked for a bed, they replied:

     You have eaten with him
     You have drunk with him,
     Of us you have not thought,

Now sleep as you ought!

And when she was asleep, the old man shook his head over her, and let
her fall into the cellar.

On the third morning the woodcutter said to his wife, 'Send our youngest
child to-day with my dinner. She is always good and obedient, and will
keep to the right path, and not wander away like her sisters, idle
drones!'

But the mother said, 'Must I lose my dearest child too?'

'Do not fear,' he answered; 'she is too clever and intelligent to lose
her way. I will take plenty of peas with me and strew them along; they
are even larger than lentils, and will show her the way.'

But when the maiden started off with the basket on her arm, the wood
pigeons had eaten up the peas, and she did not know which way to go. She
was much distressed, and thought constantly of her poor hungry father
and her anxious mother. At last, when it grew dark, she saw the little
light, and came to the house in the wood. She asked prettily if she
might stay there for the night, and the man with the white beard asked
his beasts again:

     Pretty cock,
     Pretty hen,
     And you, pretty brindled cow,
     What do you say now?

'Duks,' they said. Then the maiden stepped up to the stove where the
animals were lying, and stroked the cock and the hen, and scratched the
brindled cow between its horns.

And when at the bidding of the old man she had prepared a good supper,
and the dishes were standing on the table, she said, 'Shall I have
plenty while the good beasts have nothing? There is food to spare
outside; I will attend to them first.'

Then she went out and fetched barley and strewed it before the cock and
hen, and brought the cow an armful of sweet-smelling hay.

'Eat that, dear beasts,' she said,' and when you are thirsty you shall
have a good drink.'

Then she fetched a bowl of water, and the cock and hen flew on to the
edge, put their beaks in, and then held up their heads as birds do when
they drink, and the brindled cow also drank her fill. When the beasts
were satisfied, the maiden sat down beside the old man at the table and
ate what was left for her. Soon the cock and hen began to tuck their
heads under their wings, and the brindled cow blinked its eyes, so the
maiden said, 'Shall we not go to rest now?'

     Pretty cock,
     Pretty hen,
     And you, pretty brindled cow,
     What do you say now?

The animals said, 'Duks:

     You have eaten with us,
     You have drunk with us,
     You have tended us right,
     So we wish you good night.'

The maiden therefore went upstairs, made the bed and put on clean sheets
and fell asleep. She slept peacefully till midnight, when there was such
a noise in the house that she awoke. Everything trembled and shook; the
animals sprang up and dashed themselves in terror against the wall; the
beams swayed as if they would be torn from their foundations, it seemed
as if the stairs were tumbling down, and then the roof fell in with a
crash. Then all became still, and as no harm came to the maiden she lay
down again and fell asleep. But when she awoke again in broad daylight,
what a sight met her eyes! She was lying in a splendid room furnished
with royal splendour; the walls were covered with golden flowers on a
green ground; the bed was of ivory and the counterpane of velvet, and on
a stool near by lay a pair of slippers studded with pearls. The maiden
thought she must be dreaming, but in came three servants richly dressed,
who asked what were her commands. 'Go,' said the maiden, 'I will get up
at once and cook the old man's supper for him, and then I will feed the
pretty cock and hen and the brindled cow.'

But the door opened and in came a handsome young man, who said, 'I am a
king's son, and was condemned by a wicked witch to live as an old man
in this wood with no company but that of my three servants, who were
transformed into a cock, a hen, and a brindled cow. The spell could only
be broken by the arrival of a maiden who should show herself kind
not only to men but to beasts. You are that maiden, and last night at
midnight we were freed, and this poor house was again transformed into
my royal palace.

As they stood there the king's son told his three servants to go and
fetch the maiden's parents to be present at the wedding feast.

'But where are my two sisters?' asked the maid.

'I shut them up in the cellar, but in the morning they shall be led
forth into the forest and shall serve a charcoal burner until they have
improved, and will never again suffer poor animals to go hungry.'

Goblin and the Grocer
Category: Love Letters
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There was once a hard-working student who lived in an attic, and he had
nothing in the world of his own. There was also a hard-working grocer
who lived on the first floor, and he had the whole house for his own.

The Goblin belonged to him, for every Christmas Eve there was waiting
for him at the grocer's a dish of jam with a large lump of butter in the
middle.

The grocer could afford this, so the Goblin stayed in the grocer's shop;
and this teaches us a good deal. One evening the student came in by the
back door to buy a candle and some cheese; he had no one to send, so he
came himself.


He got what he wanted, paid for it, and nodded a good evening to the
grocer and his wife (she was a woman who could do more than nod; she
could talk).

When the student had said good night he suddenly stood still, reading
the sheet of paper in which the cheese had been wrapped.

It was a leaf torn out of an old book--a book of poetry

'There's more of that over there!' said the grocer 'I gave an old woman
some coffee for the book. If you like to give me twopence you can have
the rest.'

'Yes,' said the student, 'give me the book instead of the cheese. I can
eat my bread without cheese. It would be a shame to leave the book to
be torn up. You are a clever and practical man, but about poetry you
understand as much as that old tub over there!'

And that sounded rude as far as the tub was concerned, but the grocer
laughed, and so did the student. It was only said in fun.

But the Goblin was angry that anyone should dare to say such a thing to
a grocer who owned the house and sold the best butter.

When it was night and the shop was shut, and everyone was in bed except
the student, the Goblin went upstairs and took the grocer's wife's
tongue. She did not use it when she was asleep, and on whatever object
in the room he put it that thing began to speak, and spoke out its
thoughts and feelings just as well as the lady to whom it belonged. But
only one thing at a time could use it, and that was a good thing, or
they would have all spoken together.

The Goblin laid the tongue on the tub in which were the old newspapers.

'Is it true,' he asked, ' that you know nothing about poetry?'

'Certainly not!' answered the tub. 'Poetry is something that is in the
papers, and that is frequently cut out. I have a great deal more in
me than the student has, and yet I am only a small tub in the grocer's
shop.'

And the Goblin put the tongue on the coffee-mill, and how it began to
grind! He put it on the butter-cask, and on the till, and all were
of the same opinion as the waste-paper tub. and one must believe the
majority.

'Now I will tell the student!' and with these words he crept softly up
the stairs to the attic where the student lived.

There was a light burning, and the Goblin peeped through the key-hole
and saw that he was reading the torn book that he had bought in the
shop.


But how bright it was! Out of the book shot a streak of light which grew
into a large tree and spread its branches far above the student. Every
leaf was alive, and every flower was a beautiful girl's head, some with
dark and shining eyes, others with wonderful blue ones. Every fruit was
a glittering star, and there was a marvellous music in the student's
room. The little Goblin had never even dreamt of such a splendid sight,
much less seen it.

He stood on tiptoe gazing and gazing, till the candle in the attic
was put out; the student had blown it out and had gone to bed, but the
Goblin remained standing outside listening to the music, which very
softly and sweetly was now singing the student a lullaby.

'I have never seen anything like this!' said the Goblin. 'I never
expected this! I must stay with the student.'

The little fellow thought it over, for he was a sensible Goblin. Then he
sighed, 'The student has no jam!'

And on that he went down to the grocer again. And it was a good thing
that he did go back, for the tub had nearly worn out the tongue. It had
read everything that was inside it, on the one side, and was just going
to turn itself round and read from the other side when the Goblin came
in and returned the tongue to its owner.

But the whole shop, from the till down to the shavings, from that night
changed their opinion of the tub, and they looked up to it, and had such
faith in it that they were under the impression that when the grocer
read the art and drama critiques out of the paper in the evenings, it
all came from the tub.

But the Goblin could no longer sit quietly listening to the wisdom and
intellect downstairs. No, as soon as the light shone in the evening
from the attic it seemed to him as though its beams were strong ropes
dragging him up, and he had to go and peep through the key-hole. There
he felt the sort of feeling we have looking at the great rolling sea in
a storm, and he burst into tears. He could not himself say why he wept,
but in spite of his tears he felt quite happy. How beautiful it must be
to sit under that tree with the student, but that he could not do; he
had to content himself with the key-hole and be happy there!

There he stood out on the cold landing, the autumn wind blowing through
the cracks of the floor. It was cold--very cold, but he first found it
out when the light in the attic was put out and the music in the wood
died away. Ah! then it froze him, and he crept down again into his warm
corner; there it was comfortable and cosy.

When Christmas came, and with it the jam with the large lump of butter,
ah! then the grocer was first with him.

But in the middle of the night the Goblin awoke, hearing a great noise
and knocking against the shutters--people hammering from outside. The
watchman was blowing his horn: a great fire had broken out; the whole
town was in flames.

Was it in the house? or was it at a neighbour's? Where was it?

The alarm increased. The grocer's wife was so terrified that she took
her gold earrings out of her ears and put them in her pocket in order
to save something. The grocer seized his account books. and the maid her
black silk dress.

Everyone wanted to save his most valuable possession; so did the Goblin,
and in a few leaps he was up the stairs and in the student's room. He
was standing quietly by the open window looking at the fire that was
burning in the neighbour's house just opposite. The Goblin seized the
book lying on the table, put it in his red cap, and clasped it with both
hands. The best treasure in the house was saved, and he climbed out on
to the roof with it--on to the chimney. There he sat, lighted up by the
flames from the burning house opposite, both hands holding tightly on
his red cap, in which lay the treasure; and now he knew what his heart
really valued most--to whom he really belonged. But when the fire was
put out, and the Goblin thought it over--then--

'I will divide myself between the two,' he said. 'I cannot quite give up
the grocer, because of the jam!'

And it is just the same with us. We also cannot quite give up the
grocer--because of the jam.
PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE
Category: Love Letters
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"Great heavens! What a woman!" cried the captain, and stamped with
fury. "Not without reason have I been trembling and in fear of her
from the first time I saw her! It must have been a warning of fate
that I stopped playing _écarté_ with her. It was also a bad omen that
I passed so many sleepless nights. Was there ever mortal in a worse
perplexity than I am? How can I leave her alone without a protector,
loving her, as I do, more than my own life? And, on the other hand,
how can I marry her, after all my declaimings against marriage?"

Then turning to Augustias--"What would they say of me in the club?
What would people say of me, if they met me in the street with a woman
on my arm, or if they found me at home, just about to feed a child in
swaddling clothes? I--to have children? To worry about them? To live
in eternal fear that they might fall sick or die? Augustias, believe
me, as true as there is a God above us, I am absolutely unfit for it!
I should behave in such a way that after a short while you would call
upon heaven either to be divorced or to become a widow. Listen to my
advice: do not marry me, even if I ask you."

"What a strange creature you are," said the young woman, without
allowing herself to be at all discomposed, and sitting very erect in
her chair. "All that you are only telling to yourself! From what do
you conclude that I wish to be married to you; that I would accept
your offer, and that I should not prefer living by myself, even if I
had to work day and night, as so many girls do who are orphans?"

"How do I come to that conclusion?" answered the captain with the
greatest candor. "Because it cannot be otherwise. Because we love each
other. Because we are drawn to each other. Because a man such as I,
and a woman such as you, cannot live in any other way! Do you suppose
I do not understand that? Don't you suppose I have reflected on it
before now? Do you think I am indifferent in your good name and
reputation? I have spoken plainly in order to speak, in order to fly
from my own conviction, in order to examine whether I can escape from
this terrible dilemma which is robbing me of my sleep, and whether I
can possibly find an expedient so that I need not marry you--to do
which I shall finally be compelled, if you stand by your resolve to
make your way alone!"

"Alone! Alone!" repeated Augustias, roguishly. "And why not with a
worthier companion? Who tells you that I shall not some day meet a man
whom I like, and who is not afraid to marry me?"

"Augustias! let us skip that!" growled the captain, his face turning
scarlet.

"And why should we not talk about it?"

"Let us pass over that, and let me say, at the same time, that I will
murder the man who dares to ask for your hand. But it is madness on
my part to be angry without any reason. I am not so dull as not to see
how we two stand. Shall I tell you? We love each other. Do not tell me
I am mistaken! That would be lying. And here is the proof: if you did
not love me, I, too, should not love you! Let us try to meet one
another halfway. I ask for a delay of ten years. When I shall have
completed my half century, and when, a feeble old man, I shall have
become familiar with the idea of slavery, then we will marry without
anyone knowing about it. We will leave Madrid, and go to the country,
where we shall have no spectators, where there will be nobody to make
fun of me. But until this happens, please take half of my income
secretly, and without any human soul ever knowing anything about it.
You continue to live here, and I remain in my house. We will see each
other, but only in the presence of witnesses--for instance, in
society. We will write to each other every day. So as not to endanger
your good name, I will never pass through this street, and on Memorial
Day only we will go to the cemetery together with Rosa."

Augustias could not but smile at the last proposal of the good
captain, and her smile was not mocking, but contented and happy, as if
some cherished hope had dawned in her heart, as if it were the first
ray of the sun of happiness which was about to rise in her heaven! But
being a woman--though as brave and free from artifices as few of
them--she yet managed to subdue the signs of joy rising within her.
She acted as if she cherished not the slightest hope, and said with a
distant coolness which is usually the special and genuine sign of
chaste reserve:

"You make yourself ridiculous with your peculiar conditions. You
stipulate for the gift of an engagement-ring, for which nobody has yet
asked you."

"I know still another way out--for a compromise, but that is really
the last one. Do you fully understand, my young lady from Aragon? It
is the last way out, which a man, also from Aragon, begs leave to
explain to you."

She turned her head and looked straight into his eyes, with an
expression indescribably earnest, captivating, quiet, and full of
expectation.

The captain had never seen her features so beautiful and expressive;
at that moment she looked to him like a queen.

"Augustias," said, or rather stammered, this brave soldier, who had
been under fire a hundred times, and who had made such a deep
impression on the young girl through his charging under a rain of
bullets like a lion, "I have the honor to ask for your hand on one
certain, essential, unchangeable condition. Tomorrow morning--today--a
soon as the papers are in order--as quickly as possible. I can live
without you no longer!"

The glances of the young girl became milder, and she rewarded him for
his decided heroism with a tender and bewitching smile.

"But I repeat that it is on one condition," the bold warrior hastened
to repeat, feeling that Augustias's glances made him confused and
weak.

"On what condition?" asked the young girl, turning fully round, and
now holding him under the witchery of her sparkling black eyes.

"On the condition," he stammered, "that, in case we have children, we
send them to the orphanage. I mean--on this point I will never yield.
Well, do you consent? For heaven's sake, say yes!"

"Why should I not consent to it, Captain Veneno?" answered Augustias,
with a peal of laughter. "You shall take them there yourself, or,
better still, we both of us will take them there. And we will give
them up without kissing them, or anything else! Don't you think we
shall take them there?"

Thus spoke Augustias, and looked at the captain with exquisite joy in
her eyes. The good captain thought he would die of happiness; a flood
of tears burst from his eyes; he folded the blushing girl in his arms,
and said:

"So I am lost?"

"Irretrievably lost, Captain Veneno," answered Augustias.

       *       *       *       *       *

One morning in May, 1852--that is, four years after the scene just
described--a friend of mine, who told me this story, stopped his horse
in front of a mansion on San Francisco Avenue, in Madrid; he threw the
reins to his groom, and asked the long-coated footman who met him at
the door:

"Is your master at home?"

"If your honor will be good enough to walk upstairs, you will find
him in the library. His excellency does not like to have visitors
announced. Everybody can go up to him directly."

"Fortunately I know the house thoroughly," said the stranger to
himself, while he mounted the stairs. "In the library! Well, well, who
would have thought of Captain Veneno ever taking to the sciences?"

Wandering through the rooms, the visitor met another servant, who
repeated, "The master is in the library." And at last he came to the
door of the room in question, opened it quickly, and stood, almost
turned to stone for astonishment, before the remarkable group which it
offered to his view.

In the middle of the room, on the carpet which covered the floor, a
man was crawling on all-fours. On his back rode a little fellow about
three years old, who was kicking the man's sides with his heels.
Another small boy, who might have been a year and a half old, stood in
front of the man's head, and had evidently been tumbling his hair. One
hand held the father's neckerchief, and the little fellow was tugging
at it as if it had been a halter, shouting with delight in his merry
child's voice:

"Gee up, donkey! Gee up!
DUEL
Category: Love Letters
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Through the little square of St. Anna, towards a certain tavern, where
the best wine is to be quaffed in Seville, there walked in measured
steps two men whose demeanor clearly manifested the soil which gave
them birth. He who walked in the middle of the street, taller than the
other by about a finger's length, sported with affected carelessness
the wide, slouched hat of Ecija, with tassels of glass beads and a
ribbon as black as his sins. He wore his cloak gathered under his left
arm; the right, emerging from a turquoise lining, exposed the merino
lambskin with silver clasps. The herdsman's boots--white, with Turkish
buttons,--the breeches gleaming red from below the cloak and covering
the knee, and, above all, his strong and robust appearance, dark curly
hair, and eye like a red-hot coal, proclaimed at a distance that all
this combination belonged to one of those men who put an end to horses
between their knees and tire out the bull with their lance.

He walked on, arguing with his companion, who was rather spare than
prodigal in his person, but marvelously lithe and supple. The latter
was shod with low shoes, garters united the stockings to the
light-blue breeches, the waistcoat was cane-colored, his sash light
green, and jaunty shoulder-knots, lappets, and rows of buttons
ornamented the carmelite jacket. The open cloak, the hat drawn over
his ear, his short, clean steps, and the manifestations in all his
limbs and movements of agility and elasticity beyond trial plainly
showed that in the arena, carmine cloth in hand, he would mock at the
most frenzied of Jarama bulls, or the best horned beasts from Utrera.

I--who adore and die for such people, though the compliment be not
returned--went slowly in the wake of their worships, and, unable to
restrain myself, entered with them the same tavern, or rather
eating-house, since there they serve certain provocatives as well as
wine, and I, as my readers perceive, love to call things by their
right name. I entered and sat down at once, and in such a manner as
not to interrupt Oliver and Roland, and that they might not notice me,
when I saw that, as if believing themselves alone, they threw their
arms with an amicable gesture round each others' neck, and thus began
their discourse:

"Pulpete," said the taller, "now that we are going to meet each
other, knife in hand--you here, I there,--_one, two_,--_on your
guard_,--_triz, traz_,--_have that_,--_take this and call it what
you like_--let us first drain a tankard to the music and measure
of some songs."

"Señor Balbeja," replied Pulpete, drawing his face aside and spitting
with the greatest neatness and pulchritude towards his shoe, "I am not
the kind of man either for La Gorja or other similar earthly matters,
or because a steel tongue is sheathed in my body, or my weasand slit,
or for any other such trifle, to be provoked or vexed with such a
friend as Balbeja. Let the wine be brought, and then, we will sing;
and afterwards blood--blood to the hilt."

The order was given, they clinked glasses, and, looking one at the
other, sang a Sevillian song.

This done, they threw off their cloaks with an easy grace, and
unsheathed their knives with which to prick one another, the one
Flemish with a white haft, the other from Guadix, with a guard to the
hilt, both blades dazzling in their brightness, and sharpened and
ground enough for operating upon cataracts, much less ripping up
bellies and bowels. The two had already cleft the air several times
with the said lancets, their cloak wound round their left arm--first
drawing closer, then back, now more boldly and in bounds--when Pulpete
hoisted the flag for parley, and said:

"Balbeja, my friend, I only beg you to do me the favor not to fan my
face with _Juilon_ your knife, since a slash might use it so ill that
my mother who bore me would not know me, and I should not like to be
considered ugly; neither is it right to mar and destroy what God made
in His likeness."

"Agreed," replied Balbeja; "I will aim lower."

"Except--except my stomach also, for I was ever a friend to
cleanliness, and I should not like to see myself fouled in a bad way,
if your knife and arm played havoc with my liver and intestines."

"I will strike higher; but let us go on."

"Take care of my chest, it was always weak."

"Then just tell me, friend, _where_ am I to sound or tap you?"

"My dear Balbeja, there's always plenty of time and space to hack at a
man; I have here on my left arm a wen, of which you can make meat as
much as you like."

"Here goes for it," said Balbeja, and he hurled himself like an arrow;
the other warded off the thrust with his cloak, and both, like skilful
penmen, began again tracing S's and signatures in the air with dashes
and flourishes without, however, raising a particle of skin.

I do not know what would have been the end of this onslaught, since my
venerable, dry, and shriveled person was not suitable for forming a
point of exclamation between two combatants; and the tavern-keeper
troubled so little about what was happening that he drowned the
stamping of their feet and clatter of the tumbling stools and utensils
by scraping street music on a guitar as loud as he could. Otherwise he
was as calm as if he were entertaining two angels instead of two
devils incarnate.

I do not know, I repeat, how this scene would have ended, when there
crossed the threshold a parsonage who came to take a part in the
development of the drama. There entered, I say, a woman of twenty to
twenty-two years of age, diminutive in body, superlative in audacity
and grace. Neat and clean hose and shoes, short, black flounced
petticoat, a linked girdle, head-dress or mantilla of fringed taffeta
caught together at the nape of her neck, and a corner of it over her
shoulder, she passed before my eyes with swaying hips, arms akimbo,
and moving her head to and fro as she looked about her on all sides.

Upon seeing her the tavern-keeper dropped his instrument, and I was
overtaken by perturbation such as I had not experienced for thirty
years (I am, after all, only flesh and blood); but, without halting
for such lay-figures, she advanced to the field of battle.

There was a lively to-do here; Don Pulpete and Don Balbeja when they
saw Doña Gorja appear, first cause of the disturbance and future prize
for the victor, increased their feints, flourishes, curvets, onsets,
crouching, and bounds--all, however, without touching a hair. Our
Helen witnessed in silence for a long time this scene in history with
that feminine pleasure which the daughters of Eve enjoy at such
critical moments. But gradually her pretty brow clouded over, until,
drawing from her delicate ear, not a flower or earring, but the stump
of a cigar, she hurled it amidst the jousters. Not even Charles V's
cane in the last duel in Spain produced such favorable effects. Both
came forward immediately with formal respect, and each, by reason of
the discomposure of his person and clothes, presumed to urge a title
by which to recommend himself to the fair with the flounces. She, as
though pensive, was going over the passage of arms in her mind, and
then, with firm and confident resolution, spoke thus:

"And is this affair for me?"

"Who else should it be for? since I--since nobody--" they replied in
the same breath.

"Listen, gentlemen," said she. "For females such as I and my parts,
of my charms and descent--daughter of La Gatusa, niece of La Mêndez,
and granddaughter of La Astrosa--know that there are neither pacts nor
compacts, nor any such futile things, nor are any of them worth a
farthing. And when men challenge each other, let the knife do its work
and the red blood flow, so as not to have my mother's daughter present
without giving her the pleasure of snapping her fingers in the face of
the other. If you pretend you are fighting for me, it's a lie; you are
wholly mistaken, and that not by halves. I love neither of you.
Mingalarios of Zafra is to my taste, and he and I look upon you with
scorn and contempt. Good-by, my braves; and, if you like, call my man
to account."

She spoke, spat, smoothed the saliva with the point of her shoe,
looking Pulpete and Balbeja full in the face, and went out with the
same expressive movements with which she entered.

The two unvarnished braggarts followed the valorous Doña Gorja with
their eyes; and then with a despicable gesture drew their knives
across their sleeve as though wiping off the blood there might have
been, sheathed them at one and the same time, and said together:

"Through woman the world was lost, through a woman Spain was lost; but
it has never been known, nor do ballads relate, nor the blind beggars
sing, nor is it heard in the square or markets, that two valiant men
killed each, other for another lover."

"Give me that fist, Don Pulpete."

"Your hand, Don Balbeja."

They spoke and strode out into the street, the best friends in the
world, leaving me all amazed at such whimsicality.
Untitled
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How old was I then? Eleven or twelve years? More probably thirteen,
for before then is too early to be seriously in love; but I won't
venture to be certain, considering that in Southern countries the
heart matures early, if that organ is to blame for such perturbations.

If I do not remember well _when_, I can at least say exactly _how_ my
first love revealed itself. I was very fond--as soon as my aunt had
gone to church to perform her evening devotions--of slipping into her
bedroom and rummaging her chest of drawers, which she kept in
admirable order. Those drawers were to me a museum; in them I always
came across something rare or antique, which exhaled an archaic and
mysterious scent, the aroma of the sandalwood fans which perfumed her
white linen. Pin-cushions of satin now faded; knitted mittens,
carefully wrapped in tissue paper; prints of saints; sewing materials;
a reticule of blue velvet embroidered with bugles, an amber and silver
rosary would appear from the corners: I used to ponder over them, and
return them to their place. But one day--I remember as well as if it
were today--in the corner of the top drawer, and lying on some collars
of old lace, I saw something gold glittering--I put in my hand,
unwittingly crumpled the lace, and drew out a portrait, an ivory
miniature, about three inches long, in a frame of gold.

I was struck at first sight. A sunbeam streamed through the window and
fell upon the alluring form, which seemed to wish to step out of its
dark background and come towards me. It was the most lovely creature,
such as I had never seen except in the dreams of my adolescence. The
lady of the portrait must have been some twenty odd years; she was no
simple maiden, no half-opened rosebud, but a woman in the full
resplendency of her beauty. Her face was oval, but not too long, her
lips full, half-open and smiling, her eyes cast a languishing
side-glance, and she had a dimple on her chin as if formed by the tip
of Cupid's playful finger. Her head-dress was strange but elegant; a
compact group of curls plastered conewise one over the other covered
her temples, and a basket of braided hair rose on the top of her head.
This old-fashioned head-dress, which was trussed up from the nape of
her neck, disclosed all the softness of her fresh young throat, on
which the dimple of her chin was reduplicated more vaguely and
delicately.

As for the dress--I do not venture to consider whether our
grandmothers were less modest than our wives are, or if the confessors
of past times were more indulgent than those of the present; I am
inclined to think the latter, for seventy years ago women prided
themselves upon being Christianlike and devout, and would not have
disobeyed the director of their conscience in so grave and important a
matter. What is undeniable is, that if in the present day any lady
were to present herself in the garb of the lady of the portrait, there
would be a scandal; for from her waist (which began at her armpits)
upwards, she was only veiled by light folds of diaphanous gauze, which
marked out, rather than covered, two mountains of snow, between which
meandered a thread of pearls. With further lack of modesty she
stretched out two rounded arms worthy of Juno, ending in finely molded
hands--when I say _hands_ I am not exact, for, strictly speaking, only
one hand could be seen, and that held a richly embroidered
handkerchief.

Even today I am astonished at the startling effect which the
contemplation of that miniature produced upon me, and how I remained
in ecstasy, scarcely breathing, devouring the portrait with my eyes. I
had already seen here and there prints representing beautiful women.
It often happened that in the illustrated papers, in the mythological
engravings of our dining-room, or in a shop-window, that a beautiful
face, or a harmonious and graceful figure attracted my precociously
artistic gaze. But the miniature encountered in my aunt's drawer,
apart from its great beauty, appeared to me as if animated by a subtle
and vital breath; you could see it was not the caprice of a painter,
but the image of a real and actual person of flesh and blood. The warm
and rich tone of the tints made you surmise that the blood was tepid
beneath that mother-of-pearl skin. The lips were slightly parted to
disclose the enameled teeth; and to complete the illusion there ran
round the frame a border of natural hair, chestnut in color, wavy and
silky, which had grown on the temples of the original.

As I have said, it was more than a copy, it was the reflection of a
living person from whom I was only separated by a wall of glass.--I
seized it, breathed upon it, and it seemed to me that the warmth of
the mysterious deity communicated itself to my lips and circulated
through my veins. At this moment I heard footsteps in the corridor. It
was my aunt returning from her prayers. I heard her asthmatic cough,
and the dragging of her gouty feet. I had only just time to put the
miniature into the drawer, shut it, and approach the window, adopting
an innocent and indifferent attitude.

My aunt entered noisily, for the cold of the church had exasperated
her catarrh, now chronic. Upon seeing me, her wrinkled eyes
brightened, and giving me a friendly tap with her withered hand, she
asked me if I had been turning over her drawers as usual.

Then, with a chuckle:

"Wait a bit, wait a bit," she added, "I have something for you,
something you will like."

And she pulled out of her vast pocket a paper bag, and out of the bag
three or four gum lozenges, sticking together in a cake, which gave me
a feeling of nausea.

My aunt's appearance did not invite one to open one's mouth and devour
these sweets: the course of years, her loss of teeth, her eyes dimmed
to an unusual degree, the sprouting of a mustache or bristles on her
sunken-in mouth, which was three inches wide, dull gray locks
fluttering above her sallow temples, a neck flaccid and livid as the
crest of the turkey when in a good temper.--In short, I did not take
the lozenges. Ugh! A feeling of indignation, a manly protest rose in
me, and I said forcibly:

"I do not want it, I don't want it."

"You don't want it? What a wonder! You who are greedier than a cat!"

"I am not a little boy," I exclaimed, drawing myself up, and standing
on tiptoes; "I don't care for sweets."

My aunt looked at me half good-humoredly and half ironically, and at
last, giving way to the feeling of amusement I caused her, burst out
laughing, by which she disfigured herself, and exposed the horrible
anatomy of her jaws. She laughed so heartily that her chin and nose
met, hiding her lips, and emphasizing two wrinkles, or rather two deep
furrows, and more than a dozen lines on her cheeks and eyelids; at the
same time her head and body shook with the laughter, until at last her
cough began to interrupt the bursts, and between laughing and coughing
the old lady involuntarily spluttered all over my face. Humiliated,
and full of disgust, I escaped rapidly thence to my mother's room,
where I washed myself with soap and water, and began to muse on the
lady of the portrait.

And from that day and hour I could not keep my thoughts from her. As
soon as my aunt went out, to slip into her room, open the drawer,
bring out the miniature, and lose myself in contemplation, was the
work of a minute. By dint of looking at it, I fancied that her
languishing eyes, through the voluptuous veiling, of her eyelashes,
were fixed in mine, and that her white bosom heaved. I became ashamed
to kiss her, imagining she would be annoyed at my audacity, and only
pressed her to my heart or held her against my cheek. All my actions
and thoughts referred to the lady; I behaved towards her with the most
extraordinary refinement and super-delicacy. Before entering my aunt's
room and opening the longed-for drawer, I washed, combed my hair, and
tidied myself, as I have seen since is usually done before repairing
to a love appointment.

I often happened to meet in the street other boys of my age, very
proud of their slip of a sweetheart, who would exultingly show me
love-letters, photographs, and flowers, and who asked me if I hadn't a
sweetheart with whom to correspond. A feeling of inexplicable
bashfulness tied my tongue, and I only replied with an enigmatic and
haughty smile. And when they questioned me as to what I thought of the
beauty of their little maidens, I would shrug my shoulders and
disdainfully call them _ugly mugs_.

One Sunday I went to play in the house of some little girl-cousins,
really very pretty, the eldest of whom was not yet fifteen. We were
amusing ourselves looking into a stereoscope, when suddenly one of the
little girls, the youngest, who counted twelve summers at most,
secretly seized my hand, and in some confusion and blushing as red as
a brazier, whispered in my ear:

"Take this."

At the same time I felt in the palm of my hand something soft and
fresh, and saw that it was a rosebud with its green foliage. The
little girl ran away smiling and casting a side-glance at me; but I,
with a Puritanism worthy of Joseph, cried out in my turn:

"Take this!"

And I threw the rosebud at her nose, a rebuff which made her tearful
and pettish with me the whole afternoon, and for which she has not
pardoned me even now, though she is married and has three children.

The two or three hours which my aunt spent morning and evening
together at church being too short for my admiration of the entrancing
portrait, I resolved at last to keep the miniature in my pocket, and
went about all day hiding myself from people just as if I had
committed some crime. I fancied that the portrait from the depth of
its prison of cloth could see all my actions, and I arrived at such a
ridiculous extremity, that if I wanted to scratch myself, pull up my
sock, or do anything else not in keeping with the idealism of my
chaste love, I first drew out the miniature, put it in a safe place,
and then considered myself free to do whatever I wanted. In fact,
since I had accomplished the theft, there was no limit to my vagaries.
At night I hid it under the pillow, and slept in an attitude of
defense; the portrait remained near the wall, I outside, and I awoke
a thousand times, fearing somebody would come to bereave me of my
treasure. At last I drew it from beneath the pillow and slipped it
between my nightshirt and left breast, on which the following day
could be seen the imprint of the chasing of the frame.

The contact of the dear miniature gave me delicious dreams. The lady
of the portrait, not in effigy, but in her natural size and
proportions, alive, graceful, affable, beautiful, would come towards
me to conduct me to her palace by a rapid and flying train. With sweet
authority she would make me sit on a stool at her feet, and would pass
her beautifully molded hand over my head, caressing my brow, my eyes,
and loose curls. I read to her out of a big missal, or played the
lute, and she deigned to smile, thanking me for the pleasure which my
reading and songs gave her. At last romantic reminiscences overflowed
in my brain, and sometimes I was a page, and sometimes a troubadour.

With all these fanciful ideas, the fact is that I began to grow thin
quite perceptibly, which was observed with great disquietude in my
parents and my aunt.

"In this dangerous and critical age of development, everything is
alarming," said my father, who used to read books of medicine, and
anxiously studied my dark eyelids, my dull eyes, my contracted and
pale lips, and above all, the complete lack of appetite which had
taken possession of me.

"Play, boy; eat, boy," he would say to me, and I replied to him,
dejectedly:

"I don't feel inclined."

They began to talk of distractions, offered to take me to the theater;
stopped my studies, and gave me foaming new milk to drink. Afterwards
they poured cold water over my head and back to fortify my nerves; and
I noticed that my father at table or in the morning when I went to his
bedroom to bid him good morning, would gaze at me fixedly for some
little time, and would sometimes pass his hand down my spine, feeling
the vertebrae. I hypocritically lowered my eyes, resolved to die
rather than confess my crime. As soon as I was free from the
affectionate solicitude of my family, I found myself alone with my
lady of the portrait. At last, to get nearer to her, I thought I would
do away with the cold crystal. I trembled upon putting this into
execution; but at last my love prevailed over the vague fear with
which such a profanation filled me, and with skillful cunning I
succeeded in pulling away the glass and exposing the ivory plate. As I
pressed my lips to the painting I could scent the slight fragrance of
the border of hair, I imagined to myself even more realistically that
it was a living person whom I was grasping with my trembling hands. A
feeling of faintness overpowered me, and I fell unconscious on the
sofa, tightly holding the miniature.

When I came to my senses I saw my father, my mother, and my aunt, all
bending anxiously over me; I read their terror and alarm in their
faces; my father was feeling my pulse, shaking his head, and
murmuring:

"His pulse is nothing but a flutter, you can scarcely feel it."

My aunt, with her claw-like fingers, was trying to take the portrait
from me, and I was mechanically hiding it and grasping it more firmly.

"But, my dear boy--let go, you are spoiling it!" she exclaimed. "Don't
you see you are smudging it? I am not scolding you, my dear.--I will
show it to you as often as you like, but don't destroy it; let go, you
are injuring it."

"Let him have it," begged my mother, "the boy is not well."

"Of all things to ask!" replied the old maid. "Let him have it! And
who will paint another like this--or make me as I was then? Today
nobody paints miniatures--it is a thing of the past, and I also am a
thing of the past, and I am not what is represented there!"

My eyes dilated with horror; my fingers released their hold on the
picture. I don't know how I was able to articulate:

"You--the portrait--is you?"

"Don't you think I am as pretty now, boy? Bah! one is better looking
at twenty-three than at--than at--I don't know what, for I have
forgotten how old I am!"

My head drooped and I almost fainted again; anyway, my father lifted
me in his arms on to the bed, and made me swallow some tablespoonfuls
of port.

I recovered very quickly, and never wished to enter my aunt's room
again.

ANGELA
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I am a poor paralysed fellow who, for many years past, has been confined
to a bed or a sofa. For the last six years I have occupied a small room,
giving on to one of the side canals of Venice, and having no one about
me but a deaf old woman, who makes my bed and attends to my food; and
there I eke out a poor income of about thirty pounds a year by making
water-colour drawings of flowers and fruit (they are the cheapest models
in Venice), and these I send to a friend in London, who sells them to a
dealer for small sums. But, on the whole, I am happy and content.

It is necessary that I should describe the position of my room rather
minutely. Its only window is about five feet above the water of the
canal, and above it the house projects some six feet, and overhangs the
water, the projecting portion being supported by stout piles driven into
the bed of the canal. This arrangement has the disadvantage (among
others) of so limiting my upward view that I am unable to see more than
about ten feet of the height of the house immediately opposite to me,
although, by reaching as far out of the window as my infirmity will
permit, I can see for a considerable distance up and down the canal,
which does not exceed fifteen feet in width. But, although I can see but
little of the material house opposite, I can see its reflection upside
down in the canal, and I take a good deal of inverted interest in such
of its inhabitants as show themselves from time to time (always upside
down) on its balconies and at its windows.

When I first occupied my room, about six years ago, my attention was
directed to the reflection of a little girl of thirteen or so (as nearly
as I could judge), who passed every day on a balcony just above the
upward range of my limited field of view. She had a glass of flowers and
a crucifix on a little table by her side; and as she sat there, in fine
weather, from early morning until dark, working assiduously all the
time, I concluded that she earned her living by needle-work. She was
certainly an industrious little girl, and, as far as I could judge by
her upside-down reflection, neat in her dress and pretty. She had an old
mother, an invalid, who, on warm days, would sit on the balcony with
her, and it interested me to see the little maid wrap the old lady in
shawls, and bring pillows for her chair, and a stool for her feet, and
every now and again lay down her work and kiss and fondle the old lady
for half a minute, and then take up her work again.

Time went by, and as the little maid grew up, her reflection grew down,
and at last she was quite a little woman of, I suppose, sixteen or
seventeen. I can only work for a couple of hours or so in the brightest
part of the day, so I had plenty of time on my hands in which to watch
her movements, and sufficient imagination to weave a little romance
about her, and to endow her with a beauty which, to a great extent, I
had to take for granted. I saw--or fancied that I could see--that she
began to take an interest in _my_ reflection (which, of course, she
could see as I could see hers); and one day, when it appeared to me that
she was looking right at it--that is to say when her reflection appeared
to be looking right at me--I tried the desperate experiment of nodding
to her, and to my intense delight her reflection nodded in reply. And so
our two reflections became known to one another.

It did not take me very long to fall in love with her, but a long time
passed before I could make up my mind to do more than nod to her every
morning, when the old woman moved me from my bed to the sofa at the
window, and again in the evening, when the little maid left the balcony
for that day. One day, however, when I saw her reflection looking at
mine, I nodded to her, and threw a flower into the canal. She nodded
several times in return, and I saw her direct her mother's attention to
the incident. Then every morning I threw a flower into the water for
'good morning', and another in the evening for 'goodnight', and I soon
discovered that I had not altogether thrown them in vain, for one day
she threw a flower to join mine, and she laughed and clapped her hands
when she saw the two flowers join forces and float away together. And
then every morning and every evening she threw her flower when I threw
mine, and when the two flowers met she clapped her hands, and so did I;
but when they were separated, as they sometimes were, owing to one of
them having met an obstruction which did not catch the other, she threw
up her hands in a pretty affectation of despair, which I tried to
imitate but in an English and unsuccessful fashion. And when they were
rudely run down by a passing gondola (which happened not unfrequently)
she pretended to cry, and I did the same. Then, in pretty pantomime, she
would point downwards to the sky to tell me that it was Destiny that had
caused the shipwreck of our flowers, and I, in pantomime, not nearly so
pretty, would try to convey to her that Destiny would be kinder next
time, and that perhaps tomorrow our flowers would be more fortunate--and
so the innocent courtship went on. One day she showed me her crucifix
and kissed it, and thereupon I took a little silver crucifix that always
stood by me, and kissed that, and so she knew that we were one in
religion.

One day the little maid did not appear on her balcony, and for several
days I saw nothing of her; and although I threw my flowers as usual, no
flower came to keep it company. However, after a time, she reappeared,
dressed in black, and crying often, and then I knew that the poor
child's mother was dead, and, as far as I knew, she was alone in the
world. The flowers came no more for many days, nor did she show any sign
of recognition, but kept her eyes on her work, except when she placed
her handkerchief to them. And opposite to her was the old lady's chair,
and I could see that, from time to time, she would lay down her work and
gaze at it, and then a flood of tears would come to her relief. But at
last one day she roused herself to nod to me, and then her flower came,
day by day, and my flower went forth to join it, and with varying
fortunes the two flowers sailed away as of yore.

But the darkest day of all to me was when a good-looking young
gondolier, standing right end uppermost in his gondola (for I could see
_him_ in the flesh), worked his craft alongside the house, and stood
talking to her as she sat on the balcony. They seemed to speak as old
friends--indeed, as well as I could make out, he held her by the hand
during the whole of their interview which lasted quite half an hour.
Eventually he pushed off, and left my heart heavy within me. But I soon
took heart of grace, for as soon as he was out of sight, the little maid
threw two flowers growing on the same stem--an allegory of which I could
make nothing, until it broke upon me that she meant to convey to me
that he and she were brother and sister, and that I had no cause to be
sad. And thereupon I nodded to her cheerily, and she nodded to me, and
laughed aloud, and I laughed in return, and all went on again as before.

Then came a dark and dreary time, for it became necessary that I should
undergo treatment that confined me absolutely to my bed for many days,
and I worried and fretted to think that the little maid and I should see
each other no longer, and worse still, that she would think that I had
gone away without even hinting to her that I was going. And I lay awake
at night wondering how I could let her know the truth, and fifty plans
flitted through my brain, all appearing to be feasible enough at night,
but absolutely wild and impracticable in the morning. One day--and it
was a bright day indeed for me--the old woman who tended me told me that
a gondolier had inquired whether the English signor had gone away or had
died; and so I learnt that the little maid had been anxious about me,
and that she had sent her brother to inquire, and the brother had no
doubt taken to her the reason of my protracted absence from the window.

From that day, and ever after during my three weeks of bed-keeping, a
flower was found every morning on the ledge of my window, which was
within easy reach of anyone in a boat; and when at last a day came when
I could be moved, I took my accustomed place on my sofa at the window,
and the little maid saw me, and stood on her head (so to speak) and
clapped her hands upside down with a delight that was as eloquent as my
right-end-up delight could be. And so the first time the gondolier
passed my window I beckoned to him, and he pushed alongside, and told
me, with many bright smiles, that he was glad indeed to see me well
again. Then I thanked him and his sister for their many kind thoughts
about me during my retreat, and I then learnt from him that her name was
Angela, and that she was the best and purest maiden in all Venice, and
that anyone might think himself happy indeed who could call her sister,
but that he was happier even than her brother, for he was to be married
to her, and indeed they were to be married the next day.

Thereupon my heart seemed to swell to bursting, and the blood rushed
through my veins so that I could hear it and nothing else for a while.
I managed at last to stammer forth some words of awkward congratulation,
and he left me, singing merrily, after asking permission to bring his
bride to see me on the morrow as they returned from church.

'For', said he, 'my Angela has known you very long--ever since she was a
child, and she has often spoken to me of the poor Englishman who was a
good Catholic, and who lay all day long for years and years on a sofa at
a window, and she had said over and over again how dearly she wished she
could speak to him and comfort him; and one day, when you threw a flower
into the canal, she asked me whether she might throw another, and I told
her yes, for he would understand that it meant sympathy for one sorely
afflicted.'

And so I learned that it was pity, and not love, except indeed such love
as is akin to pity, that prompted her to interest herself in my welfare,
and there was an end of it all.

For the two flowers that I thought were on one stem were two flowers
tied together (but I could not tell that), and they were meant to
indicate that she and the gondolier were affianced lovers, and my
expressed pleasure at this symbol delighted her, for she took it to
mean that I rejoiced in her happiness.

And the next day the gondolier came with a train of other gondoliers,
all decked in their holiday garb, and on his gondola sat Angela, happy,
and blushing at her happiness. Then he and she entered the house in
which I dwelt, and came into my room (and it was strange indeed, after
so many years of inversion, to see her with her head above her feet!),
and then she wished me happiness and a speedy restoration to good health
(which could never be); and I in broken words and with tears in my eyes,
gave her the little silver crucifix that had stood by my bed or my table
for so many years. And Angela took it reverently, and crossed herself,
and kissed it, and so departed with her delighted husband.

And as I heard the song of the gondoliers as they went their way--the
song dying away in the distance as the shadows of the sundown closed
around me--I felt that they were singing the requiem of the only love
that had ever entered my heart.

THE ROAD TO DOUBT
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The first effect of what used to be called natural philosophy is to fill its devotee with wonder at the marvels of God. This explains why the pursuit of science, so long as it remains superficial, is not incompatible with the most naif sort of religious faith. But the moment the student of the sciences passes this stage of childlike amazement and begins to investigate the inner workings of natural phenomena, he begins to see how ineptly many of them are managed, and so he tends to pass from awe of the Creator to criticism of the Creator, and once he has crossed that bridge he has ceased to be a believer. One finds plenty of neighborhood physicians, amateur botanists, high-school physics teachers and other such quasi-scientists in the pews on Sunday, but one never sees a Huxley there, or a Darwin, or an Ehrlich.
ZOOS
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I often wonder how much sound and nourishing food is fed to the animals in the zoological gardens of America every week, and try to figure out what the public gets in return for the cost thereof. The annual bill must surely run into millions; one is constantly hearing how much beef a lion downs at a meal, and how many tons of hay an elephant dispatches in a month. And to what end? To the end, principally, that a horde of superintendents and keepers may be kept in easy jobs. To the end, secondarily, that the least intelligent minority of the population may have an idiotic show to gape at on Sunday afternoons, and that the young of the species may be instructed in the methods of amour prevailing among chimpanzees and become privy to the technic employed by jaguars, hyenas and polar bears in ridding themselves of lice.
So far as I can make out, after laborious visits to all the chief zoos of the nation, no other imaginable purpose is served by their existence. One hears constantly, true enough (mainly from the gentlemen they support) that they are educational. But how? Just what sort of instruction do they radiate, and what is its value? I have never been able to find out. The sober truth is that they are no more educational than so many firemen's parades or displays of sky-rockets, and that all they actually offer to the public in return for the taxes wasted upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to Congress or a state legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.
Education your grandmother! Show me a schoolboy who has ever learned anything valuable or important by watching a mangy old lion snoring away in its cage or a family of monkeys fighting for peanuts. To get any useful instruction out of such a spectacle is palpably impossible; not even a college professor is improved by it. The most it can imaginably impart is that the stripes of a certain sort of tiger run one way and the stripes of another sort some other way, that hyenas and polecats smell worse than Greek 'bus boys, that the Latin name of the raccoon (who was unheard of by the Romans) is Procyon lotor. For the dissemination of such banal knowledge, absurdly emitted and defectively taken in, the taxpayers of the United States are mulcted in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. As well make them pay for teaching policemen the theory of least squares, or for instructing roosters in the laying of eggs.
But zoos, it is argued, are of scientific value. They enable learned men to study this or that. Again the facts blast the theory. No scientific discovery of any value whatsoever, even to the animals themselves, has ever come out of a zoo. The zoo scientist is the old woman of zoology, and his alleged wisdom is usually exhibited, not in the groves of actual learning, but in the yellow journals. He is to biology what the late Camille Flammarion was to astronomy, which is to say, its court jester and reductio ad absurdum. When he leaps into public notice with some new pearl of knowledge, it commonly turns out to be no more than the news that Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian lady walrus, has had her teeth plugged with zinc and is expecting twins. Or that Pishposh, the man-eating alligator, is down with locomotor ataxia. Or that Damon, the grizzly, has just finished his brother Pythias in the tenth round, chewing off his tail, nose and remaining ear.
Science, of course, has its uses for the lower animals. A diligent study of their livers and lights helps to an understanding of the anatomy and physiology, and particularly of the pathology, of man. They are necessary aids in devising and manufacturing many remedial agents, and in testing the virtues of those already devised; out of the mute agonies of a rabbit or a calf may come relief for a baby with diphtheria, or means for an archdeacon to escape the consequences of his youthful follies. Moreover, something valuable is to be got out of a mere study of their habits, instincts and ways of mind—knowledge that, by analogy, may illuminate the parallel doings of the genus homo, and so enable us to comprehend the primitive mental processes of Congressmen, morons and the rev. clergy.
But it must be obvious that none of these studies can be made in a zoo. The zoo animals, to begin with, provide no material for the biologist; he can find out no more about their insides than what he discerns from a safe distance and through the bars. He is not allowed to try his germs and specifics upon them; he is not allowed to vivisect them. If he would find out what goes on in the animal body under this condition or that, he must turn from the inhabitants of the zoo to the customary guinea pigs and street dogs, and buy or steal them for himself. Nor does he get any chance for profitable inquiry when zoo animals die (usually of lack of exercise or ignorant doctoring), for their carcasses are not handed to him for autopsy, but at once stuffed with gypsum and excelsior and placed in some museum.
Least of all do zoos produce any new knowledge about animal behavior. Such knowledge must be got, not from animals penned up and tortured, but from animals in a state of nature. A college professor studying the habits of the giraffe, for example, and confining his observations to specimens in zoos, would inevitably come to the conclusion that the giraffe is a sedentary and melancholy beast, standing immovable for hours at a time and employing an Italian to feed him hay and cabbages. As well proceed to a study of the psychology of a juris-consult by first immersing him in Sing Sing, or of a juggler by first cutting off his hands. Knowledge so gained is inaccurate and imbecile knowledge. Not even a college professor, if sober, would give it any faith and credit.
There remains, then, the only true utility of a zoo: it is a childish and pointless show for the unintelligent, in brief, for children, nursemaids, visiting yokels and the generality of the defective. Should the taxpayers be forced to sweat millions for such a purpose? I think not. The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combatted at the public expense, and not fostered. He is a public liability and a public menace, and society should seek to improve him. Instead of that, we spend a lot of money to feed his degrading appetite and further paralyze his mind. It is precisely as if the community provided free champagne for dipsomaniacs, or hired lecturers to convert the army to the doctrines of the Bolsheviki.
Of the abominable cruelties practised in zoos it is unnecessary to make mention. Even assuming that all the keepers are men of delicate natures and ardent zoophiles (which is about as safe as assuming that the keepers of a prison are all sentimentalists, and weep for the sorrows of their charges), it must be plain that the work they do involves an endless war upon the native instincts of the animals, and that they must thus inflict the most abominable tortures every day. What could be a sadder sight than a tiger in a cage, save it be a forest monkey climbing dispairingly up a barked stump, or an eagle chained to its roost? How can man be benefitted and made better by robbing the seal of its arctic ice, the hippopotamus of its soft wallow, the buffalo of its open range, the lion of its kingship, the birds of their air?
I am no sentimentalist, God knows. I am in favor of vivisection unrestrained, so long as the vivisectionist knows what he is about. I advocate clubbing a dog that barks unnecessarily, which all dogs do. I enjoy hangings, particularly of converts to the evangelical faiths. The crunch of a cockroach is music to my ears. But when the day comes to turn the prisoners of the zoo out of their cages, if it is only to lead them to the swifter, kinder knife of the schochet, I shall be present and rejoicing, and if any one present thinks to suggest that it would be a good plan to celebrate the day by shooting the whole zoo faculty, I shall have a revolver in my pocket and a sound eye in my head.
WILD SHOTS
Category: Love Letters
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If I had the time, and there were no sweeter follies offering, I should like to write an essay on the books that have quite failed of achieving their original purposes, and are yet of respectable use and potency for other purposes. For example, the Book of Revelation. The obvious aim of the learned author of this work was to bring the early Christians into accord by telling them authoritatively what to expect and hope for; its actual effect during eighteen hundred years has been to split them into a multitude of camps, and so set them to denouncing, damning, jailing and murdering one another. Again, consider the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. Ben wrote it to prove that he was an honest man, a mirror of all the virtues, an injured innocent; the world, reading it, hails him respectfully as the noblest, the boldest, the gaudiest liar that ever lived. Again, turn to "Gulliver's Travels." The thing was planned by its rev. author as a devastating satire, a terrible piece of cynicism; it survives as a story-book for sucklings. Yet again, there is "Hamlet." Shakespeare wrote it frankly to make money for a theatrical manager; it has lost money for theatrical managers ever since. Yet again, there is Caesar's "De Bello Gallico." Julius composed it to thrill and arouse the Romans; its sole use today is to stupefy and sicken schoolboys. Finally, there is the celebrated book of General F. von Bernhardi. He wrote it to inflame Germany; its effect was to inflame England....
The list might be lengthened almost ad infinitum. When a man writes a book he fires a machine gun into a wood. The game he brings down often astonishes him, and sometimes horrifies him. Consider the case of Ibsen.... After my book on Nietzsche I was actually invited to lecture at Princeton.
HOLY ESTATE
Category: Love Letters
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Marriage is always a man's second choice. It is entered upon, more often than not, as the safest form of intrigue. The caitiff yields quickest; the man who loves danger and adventure holds out longest. Behind it one frequently finds, not that lofty romantic passion which poets hymn, but a mere yearning for peace and security. The abominable hazards of the high seas, the rough humors and pestilences of the forecastle—these drive the timid mariner ashore.... The authentic Cupid, at least in Christendom, was discovered by the late Albert Ludwig Siegmund Neisser in 1879.
VOLUPTUOUS
Category: Love Letters
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Why has no publisher ever thought of perfuming his novels? The final refinement of publishing, already bedizened by every other art! Barabbas turned Petronius! For instance, consider the bucolic romances of the hyphenated Mrs. Porter. They have a subtle flavor of new-mown hay and daffodils already; why not add the actual essence, or at all events some safe coal-tar substitute, and so help imagination to spread its wings? For Hall Caine, musk and synthetic bergamot. For Mrs. Glyn and her neighbors on the tiger-skin, the fragrant blood of the red, red rose. For the ruffianish pages of Jack London, the pungent, hospitable smell of a first-class bar-room—that indescribable mingling of Maryland rye, cigar smoke, stale malt liquor, radishes, potato salad and blutwurst. For the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable Phillpotts, the warm ammoniacal bouquet of cows, poultry and yokels. For the "Dodo" school, violets and Russian cigarettes. For the venerable Howells, lavender and mignonette. For Zola, Rochefort and wet leather. For Mrs. Humphrey Ward, lilies of the valley. For Marie Corelli, tuberoses and embalming fluid. For Chambers, sachet and lip paint. For——
But I leave you to make your own choices. All I offer is the general idea. It has been tried in the theatre. Well do I remember the first weeks of "Florodora" at the old Casino, with a mannikin in the lobby squirting "La Flor de Florodora" upon all us Florodorans.... I was put on trial for my life when I got home!
ALCOHOL
Category: Love Letters
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Envy, as I have said, is at the heart of the messianic delusion, the mania to convert the happy sinner into a "good" man, and so make him miserable. And at the heart of that envy is fear—the fear to sin, to take a chance, to monkey with the buzzsaw. This ineradicable fear is the outstanding mark of the fifth-rate man, at all times and everywhere. It dominates his politics, his theology, his whole thinking. He is a moral fellow because he is afraid to venture over the fence—and he hates the man who is not.
The solemn proofs, so laboriously deduced from life insurance statistics, that the man who uses alcohol, even moderately, dies slightly sooner than the teetotaler—these proofs merely show that this man is one who leads an active and vigorous life, and so faces hazards and uses himself up—in brief, one who lives at high tempo and with full joy, what Nietzsche used to call the ja-sager, or yes-sayer. He may, in fact, die slightly sooner than the teetotaler, but he lives infinitely longer. Moreover, his life, humanly speaking, is much more worth while, to himself and to the race. He does the hard and dangerous work of the world, he takes the chances, he makes the experiments. He is the soldier, the artist, the innovator, the lover. All the great works of man have been done by men who thus lived joyously, strenuously, and perhaps a bit dangerously. They have never been concerned about stretching life for two or three more years; they have been concerned about making life engrossing and stimulating and a high adventure while it lasts. Teetotalism is as impossible to such men as any other manifestation of cowardice, and, if it were possible, it would destroy their utility and significance just as certainly.
A man who shrinks from a cocktail before dinner on the ground that it may flabbergast his hormones, and so make him die at 69 years, ten months and five days instead of at 69 years, eleven months and seven days—such a man is as absurd a poltroon as the fellow who shrinks from kissing a woman on the ground that she may floor him with a chair leg. Each flees from a purely theoretical risk. Each is a useless encumberer of the earth, and the sooner dead the better. Each is a discredit to the human race, already discreditable enough, God knows.
Teetotalism does not make for human happiness; it makes for the dull, idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world, the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe life, but a full life; they do not try to follow the canary bird in a cage, but the eagle in the air. And in particular they do not flee from shadows and bugaboos. The alcohol myth is such a bugaboo. The sort of man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is always scared.
No wonder the Rockefellers and their like are hot for saving the workingman from John Barleycorn! Imagine the advantage to them of operating upon a flabby horde of timorous and joyless slaves, afraid of all fun and kicking up, horribly moral, eager only to live as long as possible! What mule-like fidelity and efficiency could be got out of such a rabble! But how many Lincolns would you get out of it, and how many Jacksons, and how many Grants?
THE DUEL OF SEX
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If I were a woman I should want to be a blonde, with golden, silky hair, pink cheeks and sky-blue eyes. It would not bother me to think that this color scheme was mistaken by the world for a flaunting badge of stupidity; I would have a better arm in my arsenal than mere intelligence; I would get a husband by easy surrender while the brunettes attempted it vainly by frontal assault.
Men are not easily taken by frontal assault; it is only strategem that can quickly knock them down. To be a blonde, pink, soft and delicate, is to be a strategem. It is to be a ruse, a feint, an ambush. It is to fight under the Red Cross flag. A man sees nothing alert and designing in those pale, crystalline eyes; he sees only something helpless, childish, weak; something that calls to his compassion; something that appeals powerfully to his conceit in his own strength. And so he is taken before he knows that there is a war. He lifts his portcullis in Christian charity—and the enemy is in his citadel.
The brunette can make no such stealthy and sure attack. No matter how subtle her art, she can never hope to quite conceal her intent. Her eyes give her away. They flash and glitter. They have depths. They draw the male gaze into mysterious and sinister recesses. And so the male behind the gaze flies to arms. He may be taken in the end—indeed, he usually is—but he is not taken by surprise; he is not taken without a fight. A brunette has to battle for every inch of her advance. She is confronted by an endless succession of Dead Man's Hills, each equipped with telescopes, semaphores, alarm gongs, wireless. The male sees her clearly through her densest smoke-clouds.... But the blonde captures him under a flag of truce. He regards her tenderly, kindly, almost pityingly, until the moment the gyves are upon his wrists.
It is all an optical matter, a question of color. The pastel shades deceive him; the louder hues send him to his artillery. God help, I say, the red-haired girl! She goes into action with warning pennants flying. The dullest, blindest man can see her a mile away; he can catch the alarming flash of her hair long before he can see the whites, or even the terrible red-browns, of her eyes. She has a long field to cross, heavily under defensive fire, before she can get into rifle range. Her quarry has a chance to throw up redoubts, to dig himself in, to call for reinforcements, to elude her by ignominious flight. She must win, if she is to win at all, by an unparalleled combination of craft and resolution. She must be swift, daring, merciless. Even the brunette of black and penetrating eye has great advantages over her. No wonder she never lets go, once her arms are around her antagonist's neck! No wonder she is, of all women, the hardest to shake off!
All nature works in circles. Causes become effects; effects develop into causes. The red-haired girl's dire need of courage and cunning has augmented her store of those qualities by the law of natural selection. She is, by long odds, the most intelligent and bemusing of women. She shows cunning, foresight, technique, variety. She always fails a dozen times before she succeeds; but she brings to the final business the abominable expertness of a Ludendorff; she has learnt painfully by the process of trial and error. Red-haired girls are intellectual stimulants. They know all the tricks. They are so clever that they have even cast a false glamour of beauty about their worst defect—their harsh and gaudy hair. They give it euphemistic and deceitful names—auburn, bronze, Titian. They overcome by their hellish arts that deep-seated dread of red which is inborn in all of God's creatures. They charm men with what would even alarm bulls.
And the blondes, by following the law of least resistance, have gone in the other direction. The great majority of them—I speak, of course, of natural blondes; not of the immoral wenches who work their atrocities under cover of a synthetic blondeness—are quite as shallow and stupid as they look. One seldom hears a blonde say anything worth hearing; the most they commonly achieve is a specious, baby-like prattling, an infantile artlessness. But let us not blame them for nature's work. Why, after all, be intelligent? It is, at best, no more than a capacity for unhappiness. The blonde not only doesn't miss it; she is even better off without it. What imaginable intelligence could compensate her for the flat blueness of her eyes, the xanthous pallor of her hair, the doll-like pink of her cheeks? What conceivable cunning could do such execution as her stupendous appeal to masculine vanity, sentimentality, egoism?
If I were a woman I should want to be a blonde. My blondeness might be hideous, but it would get me a husband, and it would make him cherish me and love me.
TEST OF TRUTH
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few religious dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Dowie's whiskers broke the back of Dowieism. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation.... But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Jenner? Or Lincoln? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet....
THEOLOGICAL MYSTERY
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The moral order of the world runs aground on hay fever. Of what use is it? Why was it invented? Cancer and hydrophobia, at least, may be defended on the ground that they kill. Killing may have some benign purpose, some esoteric significance, some cosmic use. But hay fever never kills; it merely tortures. No man ever died of it. Is the torture, then, an end in itself? Does it break the pride of strutting, snorting man, and turn his heart to the things of the spirit? Nonsense! A man with hay fever is a natural criminal. He curses the gods, and defies them to kill him. He even curses the devil. Is its use, then, to prepare him for happiness to come—for the vast ease and comfort of convalescence? Nonsense again! The one thing he is sure of, the one thing he never forgets for a moment, is that it will come back again next year.
CLUBS
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Men's clubs have but one intelligible purpose: to afford asylum to fellows who haven't any girls. Hence their general gloom, their air of lost causes, their prevailing acrimony. No man would ever enter a club if he had an agreeable woman to talk to. This is particularly true of married men. Those of them that one finds in clubs answer to a general description: they have wives too unattractive to entertain them, and yet too watchful to allow them to seek entertainment elsewhere. The bachelors, in the main, belong to two classes: (a) those who have been unfortunate in amour, and are still too sore to show any new enterprise, and (b) those so lacking in charm that no woman will pay any attention to them. Is it any wonder that the men one thus encounters in clubs are stupid and miserable creatures, and that they find their pleasure in such banal sports as playing cards, drinking highballs, shooting pool, and reading the barber-shop weeklies?... The day a man's mistress is married one always finds him at his club.
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER
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s for William Jennings Bryan, of whom so much piffle, pro and con, has been written, the whole of his political philosophy may be reduced to two propositions, neither of which is true. The first is the proposition that the common people are wise and honest, and the second is the proposition that all persons who refuse to believe it are scoundrels. Take away the two, and all that would remain of Jennings would be a somewhat greasy bald-headed man with his mouth open.
ACTORS
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"In France they call an actor a m'as-tu-vu, which, anglicised, means a have-you-seen-me?... The average actor holds the mirror up to nature and sees in it only the reflection of himself." I take the words from a late book on the so-called art of the mime by the editor of a magazine devoted to the stage. The learned author evades plumbing the psychological springs of this astounding and almost invariable vanity, this endless bumptiousness of the cabotin in all climes and all ages. His one attempt is banal: "a foolish public makes much of him." With all due respect, Nonsense! The larval actor is full of hot and rancid gases long before a foolish public has had a fair chance to make anything of him at all, and he continues to emit them long after it has tried him, condemned him and bidden him be damned. There is, indeed, little choice in the virulence of their self-respect between a Broadway star who is slobbered over by press agents and fat women, and the poor ham who plays thinking parts in a No. 7 road company. The two are alike charged to the limit; one more ohm, or molecule, and they would burst. Actors begin where militia colonels, Fifth avenue rectors and Chautauqua orators leave off. The most modest of them (barring, perhaps, a few unearthly traitors to the craft) matches the conceit of the solitary pretty girl on a slow ship. In their lofty eminence of pomposity they are challenged only by Anglican bishops and grand opera tenors. I have spoken of the danger they run of bursting. In the case of tenors it must sometimes actually happen; even the least of them swells visibly as he sings, and permanently as he grows older....
But why are actors, in general, such blatant and obnoxious asses, such arrant posturers and wind-bags? Why is it as surprising to find an unassuming and likable fellow among them as to find a Greek without fleas? The answer is quite simple. To reach it one needs but consider the type of young man who normally gets stage-struck. Is he, taking averages, the intelligent, alert, ingenious, ambitious young fellow? Is he the young fellow with ideas in him, and a yearning for hard and difficult work? Is he the diligent reader, the hard student, the eager inquirer? No. He is, in the overwhelming main, the neighborhood fop and beau, the human clothes-horse, the nimble squire of dames. The youths of more active mind, emerging from adolescence, turn to business and the professions; the men that they admire and seek to follow are men of genuine distinction, men who have actually done difficult and valuable things, men who have fought good (if often dishonest) fights and are respected and envied by other men. The stage-struck youth is of a softer and more shallow sort. He seeks, not a chance to test his mettle by hard and useful work, but an easy chance to shine. He craves the regard, not of men, but of women. He is, in brief, a hollow and incompetent creature, a strutter and poseur, a popinjay, a pretty one....
I thus beg the question, but explain the actor. He is this silly youngster grown older, but otherwise unchanged. An initiate of a profession requiring little more information, culture or capacity for ratiocination than that of the lady of joy, and surrounded in his work-shop by men who are as stupid, as vain and as empty as he himself will be in the years to come, he suffers an arrest of development, and the little intelligence that may happen to be in him gets no chance to show itself. The result, in its usual manifestation, is the average bad actor—a man with the cerebrum of a floor-walker and the vanity of a fashionable clergyman. The result, in its highest and holiest form is the actor-manager, with his retinue of press-agents, parasites and worshipping wenches—perhaps the most preposterous and awe-inspiring donkey that civilization has yet produced. To look for sense in a fellow of such equipment and such a history would be like looking for serviettes in a sailors' boarding-house.
By the same token, the relatively greater intelligence of actresses is explained. They are, at their worst, quite as bad as the generality of actors. There are she-stars who are all temperament and balderdash—intellectually speaking, beggars on horseback, servant girls well washed. But no one who knows anything about the stage need be told that it can show a great many more quick-minded and self-respecting women than intelligent men. And why? Simply because its women are recruited, in the main, from a class much above that which furnishes its men. It is, after all, not unnatural for a woman of considerable intelligence to aspire to the stage. It offers her, indeed, one of the most tempting careers that is open to her. She cannot hope to succeed in business, and in the other professions she is an unwelcome and much-scoffed-at intruder, but on the boards she can meet men on an equal footing. It is, therefore, no wonder that women of a relatively superior class often take to the business.... Once they embrace it, their superiority to their male colleagues is quickly manifest. All movements against puerility and imbecility in the drama have originated, not with actors, but with actresses—that is, in so far as they have originated among stage folks at all. The Ibsen pioneers were such women as Helena Modjeska, Agnes Sorma and Janet Achurch; the men all hung back. Ibsen, it would appear, was aware of this superior alertness and took shrewd advantage of it. At all events, his most tempting acting parts are feminine ones.
The girls of the stage demonstrate this tendency against great difficulties. They have to carry a heavy handicap in the enormous number of women who seek the footlights merely to advertise their real profession, but despite all this, anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with stagefolk will testify that, taking one with another, the women have vastly more brains than the men and are appreciably less vain and idiotic. Relatively few actresses of any rank marry actors. They find close communion with the strutting brethren psychologically impossible. Stock-brokers, dramatists and even theatrical managers are greatly to be preferred.
WAR
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Superficially, war seems inordinately cruel and wasteful, and yet it must be plain on reflection that the natural evolutionary process is quite as cruel and even more wasteful. Man's chief efforts in times of peace are devoted to making that process less violent and sanguinary. Civilization, indeed, may be defined as a constructive criticism of nature, and Huxley even called it a conspiracy against nature. Man tries to remedy what must inevitably seem the mistakes and to check what must inevitably seem the wanton cruelty of the Creator. In war man abandons these efforts, and so becomes more jovian. The Greeks never represented the inhabitants of Olympus as succoring and protecting one another, but always as fighting and attempting to destroy one another. No form of death inflicted by war is one-half so cruel as certain forms of death that are seen in hospitals every day. Besides, these forms of death have the further disadvantage of being inglorious. The average man, dying in bed, not only has to stand the pains and terrors of death; he must also, if he can bring himself to think of it at all, stand the notion that he is ridiculous.... The soldier is at least not laughed at. Even his enemies treat his agonies with respect.
CURSE OF CIVILIZATION
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A civilized man's worst curse is social obligation. The most unpleasant act imaginable is to go to a dinner party. One could get far better food, taking one day with another, at Childs', or even in a Pennsylvania Railroad dining-car; one could find far more amusing society in a bar-room or a bordello, or even at the Y. M. C. A. No hostess in Christendom ever arranged a dinner party of any pretensions without including at least one intensely disagreeable person—a vain and vapid girl, a hideous woman, a follower of baseball, a stock-broker, a veteran of some war or other, a gabbler of politics. And one is enough to do the business.
HISTORY
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It is the misfortune of humanity that its history is chiefly written by third-rate men. The first-rate man seldom has any impulse to record and philosophise; his impulse is to act; life, to him, is an adventure, not a syllogism or an autopsy. Thus the writing of history is left to college professors, moralists, theorists, dunder-heads. Few historians, great or small, have shown any capacity for the affairs they presume to describe and interpret. Gibbon was an inglorious failure as a member of Parliament. Thycydides made such a mess of his military (or, rather, naval) command that he was exiled from Athens for twenty years and finally assassinated. Flavius Josephus, serving as governor of Galilee, lost the whole province to the Romans, and had to flee for his life. Momssen, elected to the Prussian Landtag, flirted with the Socialists. How much better we would understand the habits and nature of man if there were more historians like Julius Caesar, or even like Niccolo Machiavelli! Remembering the sharp and devastating character of their rough notes, think what marvelous histories Bismarck, Washington and Frederick the Great might have written! Such men are privy to the facts; the usual historians have to depend on deductions, rumors, guesses. Again, such men know how to tell the truth, however unpleasant; they are wholly free of that puerile moral obsession which marks the professor.... But they so seldom tell it! Well, perhaps some of them have—and their penalty is that they are damned and forgotten.
LYING
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Lying stands on a different plane from all other moral offenses, not because it is intrinsically more heinous or less heinous, but simply because it is the only one that may be accurately measured. Forgetting unwitting error, which has nothing to do with morals, a statement is either true or not true. This is a simple distinction and relatively easy to establish. But when one comes to other derelictions the thing grows more complicated. The line between stealing and not stealing is beautifully vague; whether or not one has crossed it is not determined by the objective act, but by such delicate things as motive and purpose. So again, with assault, sex offenses, and even murder; there may be surrounding circumstances which greatly condition the moral quality of the actual act. But lying is specific, exact, scientific. Its capacity for precise determination, indeed, makes its presence or non-presence the only accurate gauge of other immoral acts. Murder, for example, is nowhere regarded as immoral save it involve some repudiation of a social compact, of a tacit promise to refrain from it—in brief, some deceit, some perfidy, some lie. One may kill freely when the pact is formally broken, as in war. One may kill equally freely when it is broken by the victim, as in an assault by a highwayman. But one may not kill so long as it is not broken, and one may not break it to clear the way. Some form of lie is at the bottom of all other recognized crimes, from seduction to embezzlement. Curiously enough, this master immorality of them all is not prohibited by the Ten Commandments, nor is it penalized, in its pure form, by the code of any civilized nation. Only savages have laws against lying per se.
TRUE ASCETIC
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Herbert Spencer's objection to swearing, of which so much has been made by moralists, was not an objection to its sinfulness but an objection to its charm. In brief, he feared comfort, satisfaction, joy. The boarding houses in which he dragged out his gray years were as bare and cheerless as so many piano boxes. He avoided all the little vices and dissipations which make human existence bearable: good eating, good drinking, dancing, tobacco, poker, poetry, the theatre, personal adornment, philandering, adultery. He was insanely suspicious of everything that threatened to interfere with his work. Even when that work halted him by the sheer agony of its monotony, and it became necessary for him to find recreation, he sought out some recreation that was as unattractive as possible, in the hope that it would quickly drive him back to work again. Having to choose between methods of locomotion on his holidays, he chose going afoot, the most laborious and least satisfying available. Brought to bay by his human need for a woman, he directed his fancy toward George Eliot, probably the most unappetizing woman of his race and time. Drawn irresistibly to music, he avoided the Fifth Symphony and "Tristan und Isolde," and joined a crowd of old maids singing part songs around a cottage piano. John Tyndall saw clearly the effect of all this and protested against it, saying, "He'd be a much nicer fellow if he had a good swear now and then"—i. e., if he let go now and then, if he yielded to his healthy human instincts now and then, if he went on some sort of debauch now and then. But what Tyndall overlooked was the fact that the meagreness of his recreations was the very element that attracted Spencer to them. Obsessed by the fear—and it turned out to be well-grounded—that he would not live long enough to complete his work, he regarded all joy as a temptation, a corruption, a sin of scarlet. He was a true ascetic. He could sacrifice all things of the present for one thing of the future, all things real for one thing ideal.
LABIAL INFAMY
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After five years of search I have been able to discover but one book in English upon the art of kissing, and that is a very feeble treatise by a savant of York, Pa., Dr. R. McCormick Sturgeon. There may be others, but I have been quite unable to find them. Kissing, for all one hears of it, has not attracted the scientists and literati; one compares its meagre literature with the endless books upon the other phenomena of love, especially divorce and obstetrics. Even Dr. Sturgeon, pioneering bravely, is unable to get beyond a sentimental and trivial view of the thing he vivisects, and so his book is no more than a compendium of mush. His very description of the act of kissing is made up of sonorous gabble about heaving bosoms, red lips, electric sparks and such-like imaginings. What reason have we for believing, as he says, that the lungs are "strongly expanded" during the act? My own casual observation inclines me to hold that the opposite is true, that the lungs are actually collapsed in a pseudo-asthmatic spasm. Again, what is the ground for arguing that the lips are "full, ripe and red?" The real effect of the emotions that accompany kissing is to empty the superficial capillaries and so produce a leaden pallor. As for such salient symptoms as the temperature, the pulse and the rate of respiration, the learned pundit passes them over without a word. Mrs. Elsie Clews Parsons would be a good one to write a sober and accurate treatise upon kissing. Her books upon "The Family" and "Fear and Conventionality" indicate her possession of the right sort of learning. Even better would be a work by Havelock Ellis, say, in three or four volumes. Ellis has devoted his whole life to illuminating the mysteries of sex, and his collection of materials is unsurpassed in the world. Surely there must be an enormous mass of instructive stuff about kissing in his card indexes, letter files, book presses and archives.
Just why the kiss as we know it should have attained to its present popularity in Christendom is probably one of the things past finding out. The Japanese, a very affectionate and sentimental people, do not practise kissing in any form; they regard the act, in fact, with an aversion matching our own aversion to the rubbing of noses. Nor is it in vogue among the Moslems, nor among the Chinese, who countenance it only as between mother and child. Even in parts of Christendom it is girt about by rigid taboos, so that its practise tends to be restricted to a few occasions. Two Frenchmen or Italians, when they meet, kiss each other on both cheeks. One used to see, indeed, many pictures of General Joffre thus bussing the heroes of Verdun; there even appeared in print a story to the effect that one of them objected to the scratching of his moustache. But imagine two Englishmen kissing! Or two Germans! As well imagined the former kissing the latter! Such a display of affection is simply impossible to men of Northern blood; they would die with shame if caught at it. The Englishman, like the American, never kisses if he can help it. He even regards it as bad form to kiss his wife in a railway station, or, in fact, anywhere in sight of a third party. The Latin has no such compunctions. He leaps to the business regardless of place or time; his sole concern is with the lady. Once, in driving from Nice to Monte Carlo along the lower Corniche road, I passed a hundred or so open taxicabs containing man and woman, and fully 75 per cent. of the men had their arms around their companions, and were kissing them. These were not peasants, remember, but well-to-do persons. In England such a scene would have caused a great scandal; in most American States the police would have charged the offenders with drawn revolvers.
The charm of kissing is one of the things I have always wondered at. I do not pretend, of course, that I have never done it; mere politeness forces one to it; there are women who sulk and grow bellicose unless one at least makes the motions of kissing them. But what I mean is that I have never found the act a tenth part as agreeable as poets, the authors of musical comedy librettos, and (on the contrary side) chaperones and the gendarmerie make it out. The physical sensation, far from being pleasant, is intensely uncomfortable—the suspension of respiration, indeed, quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation—and the posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically, a man kisses a woman perpendicularly, with their eyes, those "windows of the soul," synchronizing exactly. But actually, on account of the incompressibility of the nasal cartilages, he has to incline either his or her head to an angle of at least 60 degrees, and the result is that his right eye gazes insanely at the space between her eyebrows, while his left eye is fixed upon some vague spot behind her. An instantaneous photograph of such a maneuvre, taken at the moment of incidence, would probably turn the stomach of even the most romantic man, and force him, in sheer self-respect, to renounce kissing as he has renounced leap-frog and walking on stilts. Only a woman (for women are quite devoid of aesthetic feeling) could survive so damning a picture.
But the most embarrassing moment, in kissing, does not come during the actual kiss (for at that time the sensation of suffocation drives out all purely psychical feelings), but immediately afterward. What is one to say to the woman then? The occasion obviously demands some sort of remark. One has just received (in theory) a great boon; the silence begins to make itself felt; there stands the fair one, obviously waiting. Is one to thank her? Certainly that would be too transparent a piece of hypocrisy, too flaccid a banality. Is one to tell her that one loves her? Obviously, there is danger in such assurances, and beside, one usually doesn't, and a lie is a lie. Or is one to descend to chatty commonplaces—about the weather, literature, politics, the war? The practical impossibility of solving the problem leads almost inevitably to a blunder far worse than any merely verbal one: one kisses her again, and then again, and so on, and so on. The ultimate result is satiety, repugnance, disgust; even the girl herself gets enough.
COMSTOCKIAN PREMISS
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It is argued against certain books, by virtuosi of moral alarm, that they depict vice as attractive. This recalls the king who hanged a judge for deciding that an archbishop was a mammal.
NAMES
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Why doesn't some patient drudge of a privat dozent compile a dictionary of the stable-names of the great? All show dogs and race horses, as everyone knows, have stable-names. On the list of entries a fast mare may appear as Czarina Ogla Fedorovna, but in the stable she is not that at all, nor even Czarina or Olga, but maybe Lil or Jennie. And a prize bulldog, Champion Zoroaster or Charlemagne XI. on the bench, may be plain Jack or Ponto en famille. So with celebrities of the genus homo. Huxley's official style and appellation was "The Right Hon. Thomas Henry Huxley, P. C., M. D., Ph. D., LL. D., D. C. L., D. Sc., F. R. S.," and his biographer tells us that he delighted in its rolling grandeur—but to his wife he was always Hal. Shakespeare, to his fellows of his Bankside, was Will, and perhaps Willie to Ann Hathaway. The Kaiser is another Willie: the late Czar so addressed him in their famous exchange of telegrams. The Czar himself was Nicky in those days, and no doubt remains Nicky to his intimates today. Edgar Allan Poe was always Eddie to his wife, and Mark Twain was always Youth to his. P. T. Barnum's stable-name was Taylor, his middle name; Charles Lamb's was Guy; Nietzsche's was Fritz; Whistler's was Jimmie; the late King Edward's was Bertie; Grover Cleveland's was Steve; J. Pierpont Morgan's was Jack; Dr. Wilson's is Tom.
Some given names are surrounded by a whole flotilla of stable-names. Henry, for example, is softened variously into Harry, Hen, Hank, Hal, Henny, Enery, On'ry and Heinie. Which did Ann Boleyn use when she cooed into the suspicious ear of Henry VIII.? To which did Henrik Ibsen answer at the domestic hearth? It is difficult to imagine his wife calling him Henrik: the name is harsh, clumsy, razor-edged. But did she make it Hen or Rik, or neither? What was Bismarck to the Fürstin, and to the mother he so vastly feared? Ottchen? Somehow it seems impossible. What was Grant to his wife? Surely not Ulysses! And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? And Rutherford B. Hayes? Was Robert Browning ever Bob? Was John Wesley ever Jack? Was Emmanuel Swendenborg ever Manny? Was Tadeusz Kosciusko ever Teddy?
A fair field of inquiry invites. Let some laborious assistant professor explore and chart it. There will be more of human nature in his report than in all the novels ever written.
MORAL INDIGNATION
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The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the republic—against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday moving-pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the cigarette, against all things sinful and charming—these astounding Methodist jehads offer fat clinical material to the student of mobocracy. In the long run, nearly all of them must succeed, for the mob is eternally virtuous, and the only thing necessary to get it in favor of some new and super-oppressive law is to convince it that that law will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates. The poor numskull who is so horribly harrowed by Puritan pulpit-thumpers that he can't go to a ball game on Sunday afternoon without dreaming of hell and the devil all Sunday night is naturally envious of the fellow who can, and being envious of him, he hates him and is eager to destroy his offensive happiness. The farmer who works 18 hours a day and never gets a day off is envious of his farmhand who goes to the crossroads and barrels up on Saturday afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter evening, glances over the Saturday Evening Post for a square and honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act. If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend to wither.
I often think, indeed, that the prohibitionist tub-thumpers make a tactical mistake in dwelling too much upon the evils and horrors of alcohol, and not enough upon its delights. A few enlarged photographs of first-class bar-rooms, showing the rows of well-fed, well-dressed bibuli happily moored to the brass rails, their noses in fragrant mint and hops and their hands reaching out for free rations of olives, pretzels, cloves, pumpernickle, Bismarck herring, anchovies, schwartenmagen, wieners, Smithfield ham and dill pickles—such a gallery of contentment would probably do far more execution among the dismal shudra than all the current portraits of drunkards' livers. To vote for prohibition in the face of the liver portraits means to vote for the good of the other fellow, for even the oldest bibulomaniac always thinks that he himself will escape. This is an act of altruism almost impossible to the mob-man, whose selfishness is but little corrupted by the imagination that shows itself in his betters. His most austere renunciations represent no more than a matching of the joys of indulgence against the pains of hell; religion, to him, is little more than synthesized fear.... I venture that many a vote for prohibition comes from gentlemen who look longingly through swinging doors—and pass on in propitiation of Satan and their alert consorts, the lake of brimstone and the corrective broomstick....
SAVING GRACE
Category: Love Letters
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Let us not burn the universities—yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.... Suppose Oxford had snared and disemboweled Shakespeare! Suppose Harvard had set its stamp upon Mark Twain!
THE HEROIC
Category: Love Letters
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For humility and poverty, in themselves, the world has little liking and less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is that the Fairy Prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and stepmother, and so enables her to lord it over them. The same idea underlies practically all other folk-stories: the essence of each of them is to be found in the ultimate triumph and exaltation of its protagonist. And of the real men and women of history, the most venerated and envied are those whose early humiliations were but preludes to terminal glories; for example, Lincoln, Whittington, Franklin, Columbus, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, Catherine, Mary of Magdala, Moses. Even the Man of Sorrows, cradled in a manger and done to death between two thieves, is seen, as we part from Him at last, in a situation of stupendous magnificence, with infinite power in His hands. Even the Beatitudes, in the midst of their eloquent counselling of renunciation, give it unimaginable splendor as its reward. The meek shall inherit—what? The whole earth! And the poor in spirit? They shall sit upon the right hand of God!...
THE REWARD
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A man labors and fumes for a whole year to write a symphony in G minor. He puts enormous diligence into it, and much talent, and maybe no little downright genius. It draws his blood and wrings his soul. He dies in it that he may live again.... Nevertheless, its final value, in the open market of the world, is a great deal less than that of a fur overcoat, half a Rolls-Royce automobile, or a handful of authentic hair from the whiskers of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Patriot
Category: Love Letters
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PIf George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be for the whole camorra of uplifters, forward-lookers and professional patriots! He was the Rockefeller of his time, the richest man in the United States, a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an exploiter of mines and timber. He was a bitter opponent of foreign alliances, and denounced their evils in harsh, specific terms. He had a liking for all forthright and pugnacious men, and a contempt for lawyers, schoolmasters and all other such obscurantists. He was not pious. He drank whisky whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, but regarded them as inflammatory dolts, and tried to save the republic from them. He advocated no sure cure for all the sorrows of the world, and doubted that such a panacea existed. He took no interest in the private morals of his neighbors.
Inhabiting These States today, George would be ineligible for any office of honor or profit. The Senate would never dare confirm him; the President would not think of nominating him. He would be on trial in all the yellow journals for belonging to the Invisible Government, the Hell Hounds of Plutocracy, the Money Power, the Interests. The Sherman Act would have him in its toils; he would be under indictment by every grand jury south of the Potomac; the triumphant prohibitionists of his native state would be denouncing him (he had a still at Mount Vernon) as a debaucher of youth, a recruiting officer for insane asylums, a poisoner of the home. The suffragettes would be on his trail, with sentinels posted all along the Accotink road. The initiators and referendors would be bawling for his blood. The young college men of the Nation and the New Republic would be lecturing him weekly. He would be used to scare children in Kansas and Arkansas. The chautauquas would shiver whenever his name was mentioned....
And what a chance there would be for that ambitious young district attorney who thought to shadow him on his peregrinations—and grab him under the Mann Act!
DUSK
Category: Love Letters
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Norman Gortsby sat on a bench in the Park, with his back to a strip of
bush-planted sward, fenced by the park railings, and the Row fronting him
across a wide stretch of carriage drive.  Hyde Park Corner, with its
rattle and hoot of traffic, lay immediately to his right.  It was some
thirty minutes past six on an early March evening, and dusk had fallen
heavily over the scene, dusk mitigated by some faint moonlight and many
street lamps.  There was a wide emptiness over road and sidewalk, and yet
there were many unconsidered figures moving silently through the half-
light, or dotted unobtrusively on bench and chair, scarcely to be
distinguished from the shadowed gloom in which they sat.

The scene pleased Gortsby and harmonised with his present mood.  Dusk, to
his mind, was the hour of the defeated.  Men and women, who had fought
and lost, who hid their fallen fortunes and dead hopes as far as possible
from the scrutiny of the curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming,
when their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and unhappy eyes might pass
unnoticed, or, at any rate, unrecognised.

   A king that is conquered must see strange looks,
   So bitter a thing is the heart of man.

The wanderers in the dusk did not choose to have strange looks fasten on
them, therefore they came out in this bat-fashion, taking their pleasure
sadly in a pleasure-ground that had emptied of its rightful occupants.
Beyond the sheltering screen of bushes and palings came a realm of
brilliant lights and noisy, rushing traffic.  A blazing, many-tiered
stretch of windows shone through the dusk and almost dispersed it,
marking the haunts of those other people, who held their own in life's
struggle, or at any rate had not had to admit failure.  So Gortsby's
imagination pictured things as he sat on his bench in the almost deserted
walk.  He was in the mood to count himself among the defeated.  Money
troubles did not press on him; had he so wished he could have strolled
into the thoroughfares of light and noise, and taken his place among the
jostling ranks of those who enjoyed prosperity or struggled for it.  He
had failed in a more subtle ambition, and for the moment he was heartsore
and disillusionised, and not disinclined to take a certain cynical
pleasure in observing and labelling his fellow wanderers as they went
their ways in the dark stretches between the lamp-lights.

On the bench by his side sat an elderly gentleman with a drooping air of
defiance that was probably the remaining vestige of self-respect in an
individual who had ceased to defy successfully anybody or anything.  His
clothes could scarcely be called shabby, at least they passed muster in
the half-light, but one's imagination could not have pictured the wearer
embarking on the purchase of a half-crown box of chocolates or laying out
ninepence on a carnation buttonhole.  He belonged unmistakably to that
forlorn orchestra to whose piping no one dances; he was one of the
world's lamenters who induce no responsive weeping.  As he rose to go
Gortsby imagined him returning to a home circle where he was snubbed and
of no account, or to some bleak lodging where his ability to pay a weekly
bill was the beginning and end of the interest he inspired.  His
retreating figure vanished slowly into the shadows, and his place on the
bench was taken almost immediately by a young man, fairly well dressed
but scarcely more cheerful of mien than his predecessor.  As if to
emphasise the fact that the world went badly with him the new-corner
unburdened himself of an angry and very audible expletive as he flung
himself into the seat.

"You don't seem in a very good temper," said Gortsby, judging that he was
expected to take due notice of the demonstration.

The young man turned to him with a look of disarming frankness which put
him instantly on his guard.

"You wouldn't be in a good temper if you were in the fix I'm in," he
said; "I've done the silliest thing I've ever done in my life."

"Yes?" said Gortsby dispassionately.

"Came up this afternoon, meaning to stay at the Patagonian Hotel in
Berkshire Square," continued the young man; "when I got there I found it
had been pulled down some weeks ago and a cinema theatre run up on the
site.  The taxi driver recommended me to another hotel some way off and I
went there.  I just sent a letter to my people, giving them the address,
and then I went out to buy some soap--I'd forgotten to pack any and I
hate using hotel soap.  Then I strolled about a bit, had a drink at a bar
and looked at the shops, and when I came to turn my steps back to the
hotel I suddenly realised that I didn't remember its name or even what
street it was in.  There's a nice predicament for a fellow who hasn't any
friends or connections in London!  Of course I can wire to my people for
the address, but they won't have got my letter till to-morrow; meantime
I'm without any money, came out with about a shilling on me, which went
in buying the soap and getting the drink, and here I am, wandering about
with twopence in my pocket and nowhere to go for the night."

There was an eloquent pause after the story had been told.  "I suppose
you think I've spun you rather an impossible yarn," said the young man
presently, with a suggestion of resentment in his voice.

"Not at all impossible," said Gortsby judicially; "I remember doing
exactly the same thing once in a foreign capital, and on that occasion
there were two of us, which made it more remarkable.  Luckily we
remembered that the hotel was on a sort of canal, and when we struck the
canal we were able to find our way back to the hotel."

The youth brightened at the reminiscence.  "In a foreign city I wouldn't
mind so much," he said; "one could go to one's Consul and get the
requisite help from him.  Here in one's own land one is far more derelict
if one gets into a fix.  Unless I can find some decent chap to swallow my
story and lend me some money I seem likely to spend the night on the
Embankment.  I'm glad, anyhow, that you don't think the story
outrageously improbable."

He threw a good deal of warmth into the last remark, as though perhaps to
indicate his hope that Gortsby did not fall far short of the requisite
decency.

"Of course," said Gortsby slowly, "the weak point of your story is that
you can't produce the soap."

The young man sat forward hurriedly, felt rapidly in the pockets of his
overcoat, and then jumped to his feet.

"I must have lost it," he muttered angrily.

"To lose an hotel and a cake of soap on one afternoon suggests wilful
carelessness," said Gortsby, but the young man scarcely waited to hear
the end of the remark.  He flitted away down the path, his head held
high, with an air of somewhat jaded jauntiness.

"It was a pity," mused Gortsby; "the going out to get one's own soap was
the one convincing touch in the whole story, and yet it was just that
little detail that brought him to grief.  If he had had the brilliant
forethought to provide himself with a cake of soap, wrapped and sealed
with all the solicitude of the chemist's counter, he would have been a
genius in his particular line.  In his particular line genius certainly
consists of an infinite capacity for taking precautions."

With that reflection Gortsby rose to go; as he did so an exclamation of
concern escaped him.  Lying on the ground by the side of the bench was a
small oval packet, wrapped and sealed with the solicitude of a chemist's
counter.  It could be nothing else but a cake of soap, and it had
evidently fallen out of the youth's overcoat pocket when he flung himself
down on the seat.  In another moment Gortsby was scudding along the dusk-
shrouded path in anxious quest for a youthful figure in a light overcoat.
He had nearly given up the search when he caught sight of the object of
his pursuit standing irresolutely on the border of the carriage drive,
evidently uncertain whether to strike across the Park or make for the
bustling pavements of Knightsbridge.  He turned round sharply with an air
of defensive hostility when he found Gortsby hailing him.

"The important witness to the genuineness of your story has turned up,"
said Gortsby, holding out the cake of soap; "it must have slid out of
your overcoat pocket when you sat down on the seat.  I saw it on the
ground after you left.  You must excuse my disbelief, but appearances
were really rather against you, and now, as I appealed to the testimony
of the soap I think I ought to abide by its verdict.  If the loan of a
sovereign is any good to you--"

The young man hastily removed all doubt on the subject by pocketing the
coin.

"Here is my card with my address," continued Gortsby; "any day this week
will do for returning the money, and here is the soap--don't lose it
again it's been a good friend to you."

"Lucky thing your finding it," said the youth, and then, with a catch in
his voice, he blurted out a word or two of thanks and fled headlong in
the direction of Knightsbridge.

"Poor boy, he as nearly as possible broke down," said Gortsby to himself.
"I don't wonder either; the relief from his quandary must have been
acute.  It's a lesson to me not to be too clever in judging by
circumstances."

As Gortsby retraced his steps past the seat where the little drama had
taken place he saw an elderly gentleman poking and peering beneath it and
on all sides of it, and recognised his earlier fellow occupant.

"Have you lost anything, sir?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, a cake of soap."

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