Here, on the walls, were reflected
pictures of the world, which represented numerous and varied scenes of
everything that took place daily, so that it was useless to read the
newspapers, and indeed there were none to be obtained in this spot.
pictures of the world, which represented numerous and varied scenes of
everything that took place daily, so that it was useless to read the
newspapers, and indeed there were none to be obtained in this spot.
Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
First came the lofty Alps,
snow-clad, and covered with clouds and dark pines. The horn resounded,
and the shepherds sang merrily in the valleys. The banana-trees bent
their drooping branches over the boat, black swans floated on the
water, and singular animals and flowers appeared on the distant shore.
New Holland, the fifth division of the world, now glided by, with
mountains in the background, looking blue in the distance. They
heard the song of the priests, and saw the wild dance of the savage to
the sound of the drums and trumpets of bone; the pyramids of Egypt
rising to the clouds; columns and sphinxes, overthrown and buried in
the sand, followed in their turn; while the northern lights flashed
out over the extinguished volcanoes of the north, in fireworks none
could imitate.
The prince was delighted, and yet he saw hundreds of other
wonderful things more than can be described. "Can I stay here
forever? " asked he.
"That depends upon yourself," replied the fairy. "If you do not,
like Adam, long for what is forbidden, you can remain here always. "
"I should not touch the fruit on the tree of knowledge," said
the prince; "there is abundance of fruit equally beautiful. "
"Examine your own heart," said the princess, "and if you do not
feel sure of its strength, return with the East Wind who brought
you. He is about to fly back, and will not return here for a hundred
years. The time will not seem to you more than a hundred hours, yet
even that is a long time for temptation and resistance. Every evening,
when I leave you, I shall be obliged to say, 'Come with me,' and to
beckon to you with my hand. But you must not listen, nor move from
your place to follow me; for with every step you will find your
power to resist weaker. If once you attempted to follow me, you
would soon find yourself in the hall, where grows the tree of
knowledge, for I sleep beneath its perfumed branches. If you stooped
over me, I should be forced to smile. If you then kissed my lips,
the garden of paradise would sink into the earth, and to you it
would be lost. A keen wind from the desert would howl around you; cold
rain fall on your head, and sorrow and woe be your future lot. "
"I will remain," said the prince.
So the East Wind kissed him on the forehead, and said, "Be firm;
then shall we meet again when a hundred years have passed. Farewell,
farewell. " Then the East Wind spread his broad pinions, which shone
like the lightning in harvest, or as the northern lights in a cold
winter.
"Farewell, farewell," echoed the trees and the flowers.
Storks and pelicans flew after him in feathery bands, to accompany
him to the boundaries of the garden.
"Now we will commence dancing," said the fairy; "and when it is
nearly over at sunset, while I am dancing with you, I shall make a
sign, and ask you to follow me: but do not obey. I shall be obliged to
repeat the same thing for a hundred years; and each time, when the
trial is past, if you resist, you will gain strength, till
resistance becomes easy, and at last the temptation will be quite
overcome. This evening, as it will be the first time, I have warned
you. "
After this the fairy led him into a large hall, filled with
transparent lilies. The yellow stamina of each flower formed a tiny
golden harp, from which came forth strains of music like the mingled
tones of flute and lyre. Beautiful maidens, slender and graceful in
form, and robed in transparent gauze, floated through the dance, and
sang of the happy life in the garden of paradise, where death never
entered, and where all would bloom forever in immortal youth. As the
sun went down, the whole heavens became crimson and gold, and tinted
the lilies with the hue of roses. Then the beautiful maidens offered
to the prince sparkling wine; and when he had drank, he felt happiness
greater than he had ever known before. Presently the background of the
hall opened and the tree of knowledge appeared, surrounded by a halo
of glory that almost blinded him. Voices, soft and lovely as his
mother's sounded in his ears, as if she were singing to him, "My
child, my beloved child. " Then the fairy beckoned to him, and said
in sweet accents, "Come with me, come with me. " Forgetting his
promise, forgetting it even on the very first evening, he rushed
towards her, while she continued to beckon to him and to smile. The
fragrance around him overpowered his senses, the music from the
harps sounded more entrancing, while around the tree appeared millions
of smiling faces, nodding and singing. "Man should know everything;
man is the lord of the earth. " The tree of knowledge no longer wept
tears of blood, for the dewdrops shone like glittering stars.
"Come, come," continued that thrilling voice, and the prince
followed the call. At every step his cheeks glowed, and the blood
rushed wildly through his veins. "I must follow," he cried; "it is not
a sin, it cannot be, to follow beauty and joy. I only want to see
her sleep, and nothing will happen unless I kiss her, and that I
will not do, for I have strength to resist, and a determined will. "
The fairy threw off her dazzling attire, bent back the boughs, and
in another moment was hidden among them.
"I have not sinned yet," said the prince, "and I will not;" and
then he pushed aside the boughs to follow the princess. She was
lying already asleep, beautiful as only a fairy in the garden of
paradise could be. She smiled as he bent over her, and he saw tears
trembling out of her beautiful eyelashes. "Do you weep for me? " he
whispered. "Oh weep not, thou loveliest of women. Now do I begin to
understand the happiness of paradise; I feel it to my inmost soul,
in every thought. A new life is born within me. One moment of such
happiness is worth an eternity of darkness and woe. " He stooped and
kissed the tears from her eyes, and touched her lips with his.
A clap of thunder, loud and awful, resounded through the trembling
air. All around him fell into ruin. The lovely fairy, the beautiful
garden, sunk deeper and deeper. The prince saw it sinking down in
the dark night till it shone only like a star in the distance
beneath him. Then he felt a coldness, like death, creeping over him;
his eyes closed, and he became insensible.
When he recovered, a chilling rain was beating upon him, and a
sharp wind blew on his head. "Alas! what have I done? " he sighed; "I
have sinned like Adam, and the garden of paradise has sunk into the
earth. " He opened his eyes, and saw the star in the distance, but it
was the morning star in heaven which glittered in the darkness.
Presently he stood up and found himself in the depths of the
forest, close to the cavern of the Winds, and the mother of the
Winds sat by his side. She looked angry, and raised her arm in the air
as she spoke. "The very first evening! " she said. "Well, I expected
it! If you were my son, you should go into the sack. "
"And there he will have to go at last," said a strong old man,
with large black wings, and a scythe in his hand, whose name was
Death. "He shall be laid in his coffin, but not yet. I will allow
him to wander about the world for a while, to atone for his sin, and
to give him time to become better. But I shall return when he least
expects me. I shall lay him in a black coffin, place it on my head,
and fly away with it beyond the stars. There also blooms a garden of
paradise, and if he is good and pious he will be admitted; but if
his thoughts are bad, and his heart is full of sin, he will sink
with his coffin deeper than the garden of paradise has sunk. Once in
every thousand years I shall go and fetch him, when he will either
be condemned to sink still deeper, or be raised to a happier life in
the world beyond the stars. "
THE PEA BLOSSOM
There were once five peas in one shell, they were green, the shell
was green, and so they believed that the whole world must be green
also, which was a very natural conclusion. The shell grew, and the
peas grew, they accommodated themselves to their position, and sat all
in a row. The sun shone without and warmed the shell, and the rain
made it clear and transparent; it was mild and agreeable in broad
daylight, and dark at night, as it generally is; and the peas as
they sat there grew bigger and bigger, and more thoughtful as they
mused, for they felt there must be something else for them to do.
"Are we to sit here forever? " asked one; "shall we not become hard
by sitting so long? It seems to me there must be something outside,
and I feel sure of it. "
And as weeks passed by, the peas became yellow, and the shell
became yellow.
"All the world is turning yellow, I suppose," said they,--and
perhaps they were right.
Suddenly they felt a pull at the shell; it was torn off, and
held in human hands, then slipped into the pocket of a jacket in
company with other full pods.
"Now we shall soon be opened," said one,--just what they all
wanted.
"I should like to know which of us will travel furthest," said the
smallest of the five; "we shall soon see now. "
"What is to happen will happen," said the largest pea.
"Crack" went the shell as it burst, and the five peas rolled out
into the bright sunshine. There they lay in a child's hand. A little
boy was holding them tightly, and said they were fine peas for his
pea-shooter. And immediately he put one in and shot it out.
"Now I am flying out into the wide world," said he; "catch me if
you can;" and he was gone in a moment.
"I," said the second, "intend to fly straight to the sun, that
is a shell that lets itself be seen, and it will suit me exactly;" and
away he went.
"We will go to sleep wherever we find ourselves," said the two
next, "we shall still be rolling onwards;" and they did certainly fall
on the floor, and roll about before they got into the pea-shooter; but
they were put in for all that. "We shall go farther than the
others," said they.
"What is to happen will happen," exclaimed the last, as he was
shot out of the pea-shooter; and as he spoke he flew up against an old
board under a garret-window, and fell into a little crevice, which was
almost filled up with moss and soft earth. The moss closed itself
round him, and there he lay, a captive indeed, but not unnoticed by
God.
"What is to happen will happen," said he to himself.
Within the little garret lived a poor woman, who went out to clean
stoves, chop wood into small pieces and perform such-like hard work,
for she was strong and industrious. Yet she remained always poor,
and at home in the garret lay her only daughter, not quite grown up,
and very delicate and weak. For a whole year she had kept her bed, and
it seemed as if she could neither live nor die.
"She is going to her little sister," said the woman; "I had but
the two children, and it was not an easy thing to support both of
them; but the good God helped me in my work, and took one of them to
Himself and provided for her. Now I would gladly keep the other that
was left to me, but I suppose they are not to be separated, and my
sick girl will very soon go to her sister above. " But the sick girl
still remained where she was, quietly and patiently she lay all the
day long, while her mother was away from home at her work.
Spring came, and one morning early the sun shone brightly
through the little window, and threw its rays over the floor of the
room. Just as the mother was going to her work, the sick girl fixed
her gaze on the lowest pane of the window--"Mother," she exclaimed,
"what can that little green thing be that peeps in at the window? It
is moving in the wind. "
The mother stepped to the window and half opened it. "Oh! " she
said, "there is actually a little pea which has taken root and is
putting out its green leaves. How could it have got into this crack?
Well now, here is a little garden for you to amuse yourself with. "
So the bed of the sick girl was drawn nearer to the window, that she
might see the budding plant; and the mother went out to her work.
"Mother, I believe I shall get well," said the sick child in the
evening, "the sun has shone in here so brightly and warmly to-day, and
the little pea is thriving so well: I shall get on better, too, and go
out into the warm sunshine again. "
"God grant it! " said the mother, but she did not believe it
would be so. But she propped up with the little stick the green
plant which had given her child such pleasant hopes of life, so that
it might not be broken by the winds; she tied the piece of string to
the window-sill and to the upper part of the frame, so that the
pea-tendrils might twine round it when it shot up. And it did shoot
up, indeed it might almost be seen to grow from day to day.
"Now really here is a flower coming," said the old woman one
morning, and now at last she began to encourage the hope that her sick
daughter might really recover. She remembered that for some time the
child had spoken more cheerfully, and during the last few days had
raised herself in bed in the morning to look with sparkling eyes at
her little garden which contained only a single pea-plant. A week
after, the invalid sat up for the first time a whole hour, feeling
quite happy by the open window in the warm sunshine, while outside
grew the little plant, and on it a pink pea-blossom in full bloom. The
little maiden bent down and gently kissed the delicate leaves. This
day was to her like a festival.
"Our heavenly Father Himself has planted that pea, and made it
grow and flourish, to bring joy to you and hope to me, my blessed
child," said the happy mother, and she smiled at the flower, as if
it had been an angel from God.
But what became of the other peas? Why the one who flew out into
the wide world, and said, "Catch me if you can," fell into a gutter
on the roof of a house, and ended his travels in the crop of a
pigeon. The two lazy ones were carried quite as far, for they also
were eaten by pigeons, so they were at least of some use; but the
fourth, who wanted to reach the sun, fell into a sink and lay there
in the dirty water for days and weeks, till he had swelled to a great
size.
"I am getting beautifully fat," said the pea, "I expect I shall
burst at last; no pea could do more that that, I think; I am the
most remarkable of all the five which were in the shell. " And the sink
confirmed the opinion.
But the young maiden stood at the open garret window, with
sparkling eyes and the rosy hue of health on her cheeks, she folded
her thin hands over the pea-blossom, and thanked God for what He had
done.
"I," said the sink, "shall stand up for my pea. "
THE PEN AND THE INKSTAND
In a poet's room, where his inkstand stood on the table, the
remark was once made, "It is wonderful what can be brought out of an
inkstand. What will come next? It is indeed wonderful. "
"Yes, certainly," said the inkstand to the pen, and to the other
articles that stood on the table; "that's what I always say. It is
wonderful and extraordinary what a number of things come out of me.
It's quite incredible, and I really don't know what is coming next
when that man dips his pen into me. One drop out of me is enough for
half a page of paper, and what cannot half a page contain? From me,
all the works of a poet are produced; all those imaginary characters
whom people fancy they have known or met. All the deep feeling, the
humor, and the vivid pictures of nature. I myself don't understand how
it is, for I am not acquainted with nature, but it is certainly in me.
From me have gone forth to the world those wonderful descriptions of
troops of charming maidens, and of brave knights on prancing steeds;
of the halt and the blind, and I know not what more, for I assure
you I never think of these things. "
"There you are right," said the pen, "for you don't think at
all; if you did, you would see that you can only provide the means.
You give the fluid that I may place upon the paper what dwells in
me, and what I wish to bring to light. It is the pen that writes: no
man doubts that; and, indeed, most people understand as much about
poetry as an old inkstand. "
"You have had very little experience," replied the inkstand.
"You have hardly been in service a week, and are already half worn
out. Do you imagine you are a poet? You are only a servant, and before
you came I had many like you, some of the goose family, and others
of English manufacture. I know a quill pen as well as I know a steel
one. I have had both sorts in my service, and I shall have many more
when he comes--the man who performs the mechanical part--and writes
down what he obtains from me. I should like to know what will be the
next thing he gets out of me. "
"Inkpot! " exclaimed the pen contemptuously.
Late in the evening the poet came home. He had been to a
concert, and had been quite enchanted with the admirable performance
of a famous violin player whom he had heard there. The performer had
produced from his instrument a richness of tone that sometimes sounded
like tinkling waterdrops or rolling pearls; sometimes like the birds
twittering in chorus, and then rising and swelling in sound like the
wind through the fir-trees. The poet felt as if his own heart were
weeping, but in tones of melody like the sound of a woman's voice.
It seemed not only the strings, but every part of the instrument
from which these sounds were produced. It was a wonderful
performance and a difficult piece, and yet the bow seemed to glide
across the strings so easily that it was as if any one could do it who
tried. Even the violin and the bow appeared to perform independently
of their master who guided them; it was as if soul and spirit had been
breathed into the instrument, so the audience forgot the performer
in the beautiful sounds he produced. Not so the poet; he remembered
him, and named him, and wrote down his thoughts on the subject. "How
foolish it would be for the violin and the bow to boast of their
performance, and yet we men often commit that folly. The poet, the
artist, the man of science in his laboratory, the general,--we all
do it; and yet we are only the instruments which the Almighty uses; to
Him alone the honor is due. We have nothing of ourselves of which we
should be proud. " Yes, this is what the poet wrote down. He wrote it
in the form of a parable, and called it "The Master and the
Instruments. "
"That is what you have got, madam," said the pen to the
inkstand, when the two were alone again. "Did you hear him read
aloud what I had written down? "
"Yes, what I gave you to write," retorted the inkstand. "That
was a cut at you because of your conceit. To think that you could
not understand that you were being quizzed. I gave you a cut from
within me. Surely I must know my own satire. "
"Ink-pitcher! " cried the pen.
"Writing-stick! " retorted the inkstand. And each of them felt
satisfied that he had given a good answer. It is pleasing to be
convinced that you have settled a matter by your reply; it is
something to make you sleep well, and they both slept well upon it.
But the poet did not sleep. Thoughts rose up within him like the
tones of the violin, falling like pearls, or rushing like the strong
wind through the forest. He understood his own heart in these
thoughts; they were as a ray from the mind of the Great Master of all
minds.
"To Him be all the honor. "
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Far away towards the east, in India, which seemed in those days
the world's end, stood the Tree of the Sun; a noble tree, such as we
have never seen, and perhaps never may see.
The summit of this tree spread itself for miles like an entire
forest, each of its smaller branches forming a complete tree. Palms,
beech-trees, pines, plane-trees, and various other kinds, which are
found in all parts of the world, were here like small branches,
shooting forth from the great tree; while the larger boughs, with
their knots and curves, formed valleys and hills, clothed with velvety
green and covered with flowers. Everywhere it was like a blooming
meadow or a lovely garden. Here were birds from all quarters of the
world assembled together; birds from the primeval forests of
America, from the rose gardens of Damascus, and from the deserts of
Africa, in which the elephant and the lion may boast of being the only
rulers. Birds from the Polar regions came flying here, and of course
the stork and the swallow were not absent. But the birds were not
the only living creatures. There were stags, squirrels, antelopes, and
hundreds of other beautiful and light-footed animals here found a
home.
The summit of the tree was a wide-spreading garden, and in the
midst of it, where the green boughs formed a kind of hill, stood a
castle of crystal, with a view from it towards every quarter of
heaven. Each tower was erected in the form of a lily, and within the
stern was a winding staircase, through which one could ascend to the
top and step out upon the leaves as upon balconies. The calyx of the
flower itself formed a most beautiful, glittering, circular hall,
above which no other roof arose than the blue firmament and the sun
and stars.
Just as much splendor, but of another kind, appeared below, in the
wide halls of the castle.
Here, on the walls, were reflected
pictures of the world, which represented numerous and varied scenes of
everything that took place daily, so that it was useless to read the
newspapers, and indeed there were none to be obtained in this spot.
All was to be seen in living pictures by those who wished it, but
all would have been too much for even the wisest man, and this man
dwelt here. His name is very difficult; you would not be able to
pronounce it, so it may be omitted. He knew everything that a man on
earth can know or imagine. Every invention already in existence or yet
to be, was known to him, and much more; still everything on earth
has a limit. The wise king Solomon was not half so wise as this man.
He could govern the powers of nature and held sway over potent
spirits; even Death itself was obliged to give him every morning a
list of those who were to die during the day. And King Solomon himself
had to die at last, and this fact it was which so often occupied the
thoughts of this great man in the castle on the Tree of the Sun. He
knew that he also, however high he might tower above other men in
wisdom, must one day die. He knew that his children would fade away
like the leaves of the forest and become dust. He saw the human race
wither and fall like leaves from the tree; he saw new men come to fill
their places, but the leaves that fell off never sprouted forth again;
they crumbled to dust or were absorbed into other plants.
"What happens to man," asked the wise man of himself, "when
touched by the angel of death? What can death be? The body decays, and
the soul. Yes; what is the soul, and whither does it go? "
"To eternal life," says the comforting voice of religion.
"But what is this change? Where and how shall we exist? "
"Above; in heaven," answers the pious man; "it is there we hope to
go. "
"Above! " repeated the wise man, fixing his eyes upon the moon
and stars above him. He saw that to this earthly sphere above and
below were constantly changing places, and that the position varied
according to the spot on which a man found himself. He knew, also,
that even if he ascended to the top of the highest mountain which
rears its lofty summit on this earth, the air, which to us seems clear
and transparent, would there be dark and cloudy; the sun would have
a coppery glow and send forth no rays, and our earth would lie beneath
him wrapped in an orange-colored mist. How narrow are the limits which
confine the bodily sight, and how little can be seen by the eye of the
soul. How little do the wisest among us know of that which is so
important to us all.
In the most secret chamber of the castle lay the greatest treasure
on earth--the Book of Truth. The wise man had read it through page
after page. Every man may read in this book, but only in fragments. To
many eyes the characters seem so mixed in confusion that the words
cannot be distinguished. On certain pages the writing often appears so
pale or so blurred that the page becomes a blank. The wiser a man
becomes, the more he will read, and those who are wisest read most.
The wise man knew how to unite the sunlight and the moonlight with
the light of reason and the hidden powers of nature; and through
this stronger light, many things in the pages were made clear to
him. But in the portion of the book entitled "Life after Death" not
a single point could he see distinctly. This pained him. Should he
never be able here on earth to obtain a light by which everything
written in the Book of Truth should become clear to him? Like the wise
King Solomon, he understood the language of animals, and could
interpret their talk into song; but that made him none the wiser. He
found out the nature of plants and metals, and their power in curing
diseases and arresting death, but none to destroy death itself. In all
created things within his reach he sought the light that should
shine upon the certainty of an eternal life, but he found it not.
The Book of Truth lay open before him, but, its pages were to him as
blank paper. Christianity placed before him in the Bible a promise
of eternal life, but he wanted to read it in his book, in which
nothing on the subject appeared to be written.
He had five children; four sons, educated as the children of
such a wise father should be, and a daughter, fair, gentle, and
intelligent, but she was blind; yet this deprivation appeared as
nothing to her; her father and brothers were outward eyes to her,
and a vivid imagination made everything clear to her mental sight. The
sons had never gone farther from the castle than the branches of the
trees extended, and the sister had scarcely ever left home. They
were happy children in that home of their childhood, the beautiful and
fragrant Tree of the Sun. Like all children, they loved to hear
stories related to them, and their father told them many things
which other children would not have understood; but these were as
clever as most grownup people are among us. He explained to them
what they saw in the pictures of life on the castle walls--the
doings of man, and the progress of events in all the lands of the
earth; and the sons often expressed a wish that they could be present,
and take a part in these great deeds. Then their father told them that
in the world there was nothing but toil and difficulty: that it was
not quite what it appeared to them, as they looked upon it in their
beautiful home. He spoke to them of the true, the beautiful, and the
good, and told them that these three held together in the world, and
by that union they became crystallized into a precious jewel,
clearer than a diamond of the first water--a jewel, whose splendor had
a value even in the sight of God, in whose brightness all things are
dim. This jewel was called the philosopher's stone. He told them that,
by searching, man could attain to a knowledge of the existence of God,
and that it was in the power of every man to discover the certainty
that such a jewel as the philosopher's stone really existed. This
information would have been beyond the perception of other children;
but these children understood, and others will learn to comprehend its
meaning after a time. They questioned their father about the true, the
beautiful, and the good, and he explained it to them in many ways.
He told them that God, when He made man out of the dust of the
earth, touched His work five times, leaving five intense feelings,
which we call the five senses. Through these, the true, the beautiful,
and the good are seen, understood, and perceived, and through these
they are valued, protected, and encouraged. Five senses have been
given mentally and corporeally, inwardly and outwardly, to body and
soul.
The children thought deeply on all these things, and meditated
upon them day and night. Then the eldest of the brothers dreamt a
splendid dream. Strange to say, not only the second brother but also
the third and fourth brothers all dreamt exactly the same thing;
namely, that each went out into the world to find the philosopher's
stone. Each dreamt that he found it, and that, as he rode back on
his swift horse, in the morning dawn, over the velvety green
meadows, to his home in the castle of his father, that the stone
gleamed from his forehead like a beaming light; and threw such a
bright radiance upon the pages of the Book of Truth that every word
was illuminated which spoke of the life beyond the grave. But the
sister had no dream of going out into the wide world; it never entered
her mind. Her world was her father's house.
"I shall ride forth into the wide world," said the eldest brother.
"I must try what life is like there, as I mix with men. I will
practise only the good and true; with these I will protect the
beautiful. Much shall be changed for the better while I am there. "
Now these thoughts were great and daring, as our thoughts
generally are at home, before we have gone out into the world, and
encountered its storms and tempests, its thorns and its thistles. In
him, and in all his brothers, the five senses were highly
cultivated, inwardly and outwardly; but each of them had one sense
which in keenness and development surpassed the other four. In the
case of the eldest, this pre-eminent sense was sight, which he hoped
would be of special service. He had eyes for all times and all people;
eyes that could discover in the depths of the earth hidden
treasures, and look into the hearts of men, as through a pane of
glass; he could read more than is often seen on the cheek that blushes
or grows pale, in the eye that droops or smiles. Stags and antelopes
accompanied him to the western boundary of his home, and there he
found the wild swans. These he followed, and found himself far away in
the north, far from the land of his father, which extended eastward to
the ends of the earth. How he opened his eyes with astonishment! How
many things were to be seen here! and so different to the mere
representation of pictures such as those in his father's house. At
first he nearly lost his eyes in astonishment at the rubbish and
mockery brought forward to represent the beautiful; but he kept his
eyes, and soon found full employment for them. He wished to go
thoroughly and honestly to work in his endeavor to understand the
true, the beautiful, and the good. But how were they represented in
the world? He observed that the wreath which rightly belonged to the
beautiful was often given the hideous; that the good was often
passed by unnoticed, while mediocrity was applauded, when it should
have been hissed. People look at the dress, not at the wearer; thought
more of a name than of doing their duty; and trusted more to
reputation than to real service. It was everywhere the same.
"I see I must make a regular attack on these things," said he; and
he accordingly did not spare them. But while looking for the truth,
came the evil one, the father of lies, to intercept him. Gladly
would the fiend have plucked out the eyes of this Seer, but that would
have been a too straightforward path for him; he works more cunningly.
He allowed the young man to seek for, and discover, the beautiful
and the good; but while he was contemplating them, the evil spirit
blew one mote after another into each of his eyes; and such a
proceeding would injure the strongest sight. Then he blew upon the
motes, and they became beams, so that the clearness of his sight was
gone, and the Seer was like a blind man in the world, and had no
longer any faith in it. He had lost his good opinion of the world,
as well as of himself; and when a man gives up the world, and
himself too, it is all over with him.
"All over," said the wild swan, who flew across the sea to the
east.
"All over," twittered the swallows, who were also flying
eastward towards the Tree of the Sun. It was no good news which they
carried home.
"I think the Seer has been badly served," said the second brother,
"but the Hearer may be more successful. "
This one possessed the sense of hearing to a very high degree:
so acute was this sense, that it was said he could hear the grass
grow. He took a fond leave of all at home, and rode away, provided
with good abilities and good intentions. The swallows escorted him,
and he followed the swans till he found himself out in the world,
and far away from home. But he soon discovered that one may have too
much of a good thing. His hearing was too fine. He not only heard
the grass grow, but could hear every man's heart beat, whether in
sorrow or in joy. The whole world was to him like a clockmaker's great
workshop, in which all the clocks were going "tick, tick," and all the
turret clocks striking "ding, dong. " It was unbearable. For a long
time his ears endured it, but at last all the noise and tumult
became too much for one man to bear.
There were rascally boys of sixty years old--for years do not
alone make a man--who raised a tumult, which might have made the
Hearer laugh, but for the applause which followed, echoing through
every street and house, and was even heard in country roads. Falsehood
thrust itself forward and played the hypocrite; the bells on the
fool's cap jingled, and declared they were church-bells, and the noise
became so bad for the Hearer that he thrust his fingers into his ears.
Still, he could hear false notes and bad singing, gossip and idle
words, scandal and slander, groaning and moaning, without and
within. "Heaven help us! " He thrust his fingers farther and farther
into his ears, till at last the drums burst. And now he could hear
nothing more of the true, the beautiful, and the good; for his hearing
was to have been the means by which he hoped to acquire his knowledge.
He became silent and suspicious, and at last trusted no one, not
even himself, and no longer hoping to find and bring home the costly
jewel, he gave it up, and gave himself up too, which was worse than
all.
The birds in their flight towards the east, carried the tidings,
and the news reached the castle in the Tree of the Sun.
"I will try now," said the third brother; "I have a keen nose. "
Now that was not a very elegant expression, but it was his way, and we
must take him as he was. He had a cheerful temper, and was, besides, a
real poet; he could make many things appear poetical, by the way in
which he spoke of them, and ideas struck him long before they occurred
to the minds of others. "I can smell," he would say; and he attributed
to the sense of smelling, which he possessed in a high degree, a great
power in the region of the beautiful. "I can smell," he would say,
"and many places are fragrant or beautiful according to the taste of
the frequenters. One man feels at home in the atmosphere of the
tavern, among the flaring tallow candles, and when the smell of
spirits mingles with the fumes of bad tobacco. Another prefers sitting
amidst the overpowering scent of jasmine, or perfuming himself with
scented olive oil. This man seeks the fresh sea breeze, while that one
climbs the lofty mountain-top, to look down upon the busy life in
miniature beneath him. "
As he spoke in this way, it seemed as if he had already been out
in the world, as if he had already known and associated with man.
But this experience was intuitive--it was the poetry within him, a
gift from Heaven bestowed on him in his cradle. He bade farewell to
his parental roof in the Tree of the Sun, and departed on foot, from
the pleasant scenes that surrounded his home. Arrived at its confines,
he mounted on the back of an ostrich, which runs faster than a
horse, and afterwards, when he fell in with the wild swans, he swung
himself on the strongest of them, for he loved change, and away he
flew over the sea to distant lands, where there were great forests,
deep lakes, lofty mountains, and proud cities. Wherever he came it
seemed as if sunshine travelled with him across the fields, for
every flower, every bush, exhaled a renewed fragrance, as if conscious
that a friend and protector was near; one who understood them, and
knew their value. The stunted rose-bush shot forth twigs, unfolded its
leaves, and bore the most beautiful roses; every one could see it, and
even the black, slimy wood-snail noticed its beauty. "I will give my
seal to the flower," said the snail, "I have trailed my slime upon it,
I can do no more.
"Thus it always fares with the beautiful in this world," said
the poet. And he made a song upon it, and sung it after his own
fashion, but nobody listened. Then he gave a drummer twopence and a
peacock's feather, and composed a song for the drum, and the drummer
beat it through the streets of the town, and when the people heard
it they said, "That is a capital tune. " The poet wrote many songs
about the true, the beautiful, and the good. His songs were listened
to in the tavern, where the tallow candles flared, in the fresh clover
field, in the forest, and on the high-seas; and it appeared as if this
brother was to be more fortunate than the other two.
But the evil spirit was angry at this, so he set to work with soot
and incense, which he can mix so artfully as to confuse an angel,
and how much more easily a poor poet. The evil one knew how to
manage such people. He so completely surrounded the poet with
incense that the man lost his head, forgot his mission and his home,
and at last lost himself and vanished in smoke.
But when the little birds heard of it, they mourned, and for three
days they sang not one song. The black wood-snail became blacker
still; not for grief, but for envy. "They should have offered me
incense," he said, "for it was I who gave him the idea of the most
famous of his songs--the drum song of 'The Way of the World;' and it
was I who spat at the rose; I can bring a witness to that fact. "
But no tidings of all this reached the poet's home in India. The
birds had all been silent for three days, and when the time of
mourning was over, so deep had been their grief, that they had
forgotten for whom they wept. Such is the way of the world.
"Now I must go out into the world, and disappear like the rest,"
said the fourth brother. He was as good-tempered as the third, but
no poet, though he could be witty.
The two eldest had filled the castle with joyfulness, and now
the last brightness was going away. Sight and hearing have always been
considered two of the chief senses among men, and those which they
wish to keep bright; the other senses are looked upon as of less
importance.
But the younger son had a different opinion; he had cultivated his
taste in every way, and taste is very powerful. It rules over what
goes into the mouth, as well as over all which is presented to the
mind; and, consequently, this brother took upon himself to taste
everything stored up in bottles or jars; this he called the rough part
of his work. Every man's mind was to him as a vessel in which
something was concocting; every land a kind of mental kitchen.
"There are no delicacies here," he said; so he wished to go out into
the world to find something delicate to suit his taste. "Perhaps
fortune may be more favorable to me than it was to my brothers. I
shall start on my travels, but what conveyance shall I choose? Are air
balloons invented yet? " he asked of his father, who knew of all
inventions that had been made, or would be made.
Air balloons had not then been invented, nor steam-ships, nor
railways.
"Good," said he; "then I shall choose an air balloon; my father
knows how they are to be made and guided. Nobody has invented one yet,
and the people will believe that it is an aerial phantom. When I
have done with the balloon I shall burn it, and for this purpose,
you must give me a few pieces of another invention, which will come
next; I mean a few chemical matches. "
He obtained what he wanted, and flew away. The birds accompanied
him farther than they had the other brothers. They were curious to
know how this flight would end. Many more of them came swooping
down; they thought it must be some new bird, and he soon had a
goodly company of followers. They came in clouds till the air became
darkened with birds as it was with the cloud of locusts over the
land of Egypt.
And now he was out in the wide world. The balloon descended over
one of the greatest cities, and the aeronaut took up his station at
the highest point, on the church steeple. The balloon rose again
into the air, which it ought not to have done; what became of it is
not known, neither is it of any consequence, for balloons had not then
been invented.
There he sat on the church steeple. The birds no longer hovered
over him; they had got tired of him, and he was tired of them. All the
chimneys in the town were smoking.
"There are altars erected to my honor," said the wind, who
wished to say something agreeable to him as he sat there boldly
looking down upon the people in the street. There was one stepping
along, proud of his purse; another, of the key he carried behind
him, though he had nothing to lock up; another took a pride in his
moth-eaten coat; and another, in his mortified body. "Vanity, all
vanity! " he exclaimed. "I must go down there by-and-by, and touch
and taste; but I shall sit here a little while longer, for the wind
blows pleasantly at my back. I shall remain here as long as the wind
blows, and enjoy a little rest. It is comfortable to sleep late in the
morning when one had a great deal to do," said the sluggard; "so I
shall stop here as long as the wind blows, for it pleases me. "
And there he stayed. But as he was sitting on the weather-cock
of the steeple, which kept turning round and round with him, he was
under the false impression that the same wind still blew, and that
he could stay where he was without expense.
But in India, in the castle on the Tree of the Sun, all was
solitary and still, since the brothers had gone away one after the
other.
"Nothing goes well with them," said the father; "they will never
bring the glittering jewel home, it is not made for me; they are all
dead and gone. " Then he bent down over the Book of Truth, and gazed on
the page on which he should have read of the life after death, but for
him there was nothing to be read or learned upon it.
His blind daughter was his consolation and joy; she clung to him
with sincere affection, and for the sake of his happiness and peace
she wished the costly jewel could be found and brought home.
With longing tenderness she thought of her brothers. Where were
they? Where did they live? How she wished she might dream of them; but
it was strange that not even in dreams could she be brought near to
them. But at last one night she dreamt that she heard the voices of
her brothers calling to her from the distant world, and she could
not refrain herself, but went out to them, and yet it seemed in her
dream that she still remained in her father's house. She did not see
her brothers, but she felt as it were a fire burning in her hand,
which, however, did not hurt her, for it was the jewel she was
bringing to her father. When she awoke she thought for a moment that
she still held the stone, but she only grasped the knob of her
distaff.
During the long evenings she had spun constantly, and round the
distaff were woven threads finer than the web of a spider; human
eyes could never have distinguished these threads when separated
from each other. But she had wetted them with her tears, and the twist
was as strong as a cable. She rose with the impression that her
dream must be a reality, and her resolution was taken.
It was still night, and her father slept; she pressed a kiss
upon his hand, and then took her distaff and fastened the end of the
thread to her father's house. But for this, blind as she was, she
would never have found her way home again; to this thread she must
hold fast, and trust not to others or even to herself. From the Tree
of the Sun she broke four leaves; which she gave up to the wind and
the weather, that they might be carried to her brothers as letters and
a greeting, in case she did not meet them in the wide world. Poor
blind child, what would become of her in those distant regions? But
she had the invisible thread, to which she could hold fast; and she
possessed a gift which all the others lacked. This was a determination
to throw herself entirely into whatever she undertook, and it made her
feel as if she had eyes even at the tips of her fingers, and could
hear down into her very heart. Quietly she went forth into the
noisy, bustling, wonderful world, and wherever she went the skies grew
bright, and she felt the warm sunbeam, and a rainbow above in the blue
heavens seemed to span the dark world. She heard the song of the
birds, and smelt the scent of the orange groves and apple orchards
so strongly that she seemed to taste it. Soft tones and charming songs
reached her ear, as well as harsh sounds and rough words--thoughts and
opinions in strange contradiction to each other. Into the deepest
recesses of her heart penetrated the echoes of human thoughts and
feelings. Now she heard the following words sadly sung,--
"Life is a shadow that flits away
In a night of darkness and woe. "
But then would follow brighter thoughts:
"Life has the rose's sweet perfume
With sunshine, light, and joy. "
And if one stanza sounded painfully--
"Each mortal thinks of himself alone,
Is a truth, alas, too clearly known;"
Then, on the other hand, came the answer--
"Love, like a mighty flowing stream,
Fills every heart with its radiant gleam. "
She heard, indeed, such words as these--
"In the pretty turmoil here below,
All is a vain and paltry show.
Then came also words of comfort--
"Great and good are the actions done
By many whose worth is never known. "
And if sometimes the mocking strain reached her--
"Why not join in the jesting cry
That contemns all gifts from the throne on high?
snow-clad, and covered with clouds and dark pines. The horn resounded,
and the shepherds sang merrily in the valleys. The banana-trees bent
their drooping branches over the boat, black swans floated on the
water, and singular animals and flowers appeared on the distant shore.
New Holland, the fifth division of the world, now glided by, with
mountains in the background, looking blue in the distance. They
heard the song of the priests, and saw the wild dance of the savage to
the sound of the drums and trumpets of bone; the pyramids of Egypt
rising to the clouds; columns and sphinxes, overthrown and buried in
the sand, followed in their turn; while the northern lights flashed
out over the extinguished volcanoes of the north, in fireworks none
could imitate.
The prince was delighted, and yet he saw hundreds of other
wonderful things more than can be described. "Can I stay here
forever? " asked he.
"That depends upon yourself," replied the fairy. "If you do not,
like Adam, long for what is forbidden, you can remain here always. "
"I should not touch the fruit on the tree of knowledge," said
the prince; "there is abundance of fruit equally beautiful. "
"Examine your own heart," said the princess, "and if you do not
feel sure of its strength, return with the East Wind who brought
you. He is about to fly back, and will not return here for a hundred
years. The time will not seem to you more than a hundred hours, yet
even that is a long time for temptation and resistance. Every evening,
when I leave you, I shall be obliged to say, 'Come with me,' and to
beckon to you with my hand. But you must not listen, nor move from
your place to follow me; for with every step you will find your
power to resist weaker. If once you attempted to follow me, you
would soon find yourself in the hall, where grows the tree of
knowledge, for I sleep beneath its perfumed branches. If you stooped
over me, I should be forced to smile. If you then kissed my lips,
the garden of paradise would sink into the earth, and to you it
would be lost. A keen wind from the desert would howl around you; cold
rain fall on your head, and sorrow and woe be your future lot. "
"I will remain," said the prince.
So the East Wind kissed him on the forehead, and said, "Be firm;
then shall we meet again when a hundred years have passed. Farewell,
farewell. " Then the East Wind spread his broad pinions, which shone
like the lightning in harvest, or as the northern lights in a cold
winter.
"Farewell, farewell," echoed the trees and the flowers.
Storks and pelicans flew after him in feathery bands, to accompany
him to the boundaries of the garden.
"Now we will commence dancing," said the fairy; "and when it is
nearly over at sunset, while I am dancing with you, I shall make a
sign, and ask you to follow me: but do not obey. I shall be obliged to
repeat the same thing for a hundred years; and each time, when the
trial is past, if you resist, you will gain strength, till
resistance becomes easy, and at last the temptation will be quite
overcome. This evening, as it will be the first time, I have warned
you. "
After this the fairy led him into a large hall, filled with
transparent lilies. The yellow stamina of each flower formed a tiny
golden harp, from which came forth strains of music like the mingled
tones of flute and lyre. Beautiful maidens, slender and graceful in
form, and robed in transparent gauze, floated through the dance, and
sang of the happy life in the garden of paradise, where death never
entered, and where all would bloom forever in immortal youth. As the
sun went down, the whole heavens became crimson and gold, and tinted
the lilies with the hue of roses. Then the beautiful maidens offered
to the prince sparkling wine; and when he had drank, he felt happiness
greater than he had ever known before. Presently the background of the
hall opened and the tree of knowledge appeared, surrounded by a halo
of glory that almost blinded him. Voices, soft and lovely as his
mother's sounded in his ears, as if she were singing to him, "My
child, my beloved child. " Then the fairy beckoned to him, and said
in sweet accents, "Come with me, come with me. " Forgetting his
promise, forgetting it even on the very first evening, he rushed
towards her, while she continued to beckon to him and to smile. The
fragrance around him overpowered his senses, the music from the
harps sounded more entrancing, while around the tree appeared millions
of smiling faces, nodding and singing. "Man should know everything;
man is the lord of the earth. " The tree of knowledge no longer wept
tears of blood, for the dewdrops shone like glittering stars.
"Come, come," continued that thrilling voice, and the prince
followed the call. At every step his cheeks glowed, and the blood
rushed wildly through his veins. "I must follow," he cried; "it is not
a sin, it cannot be, to follow beauty and joy. I only want to see
her sleep, and nothing will happen unless I kiss her, and that I
will not do, for I have strength to resist, and a determined will. "
The fairy threw off her dazzling attire, bent back the boughs, and
in another moment was hidden among them.
"I have not sinned yet," said the prince, "and I will not;" and
then he pushed aside the boughs to follow the princess. She was
lying already asleep, beautiful as only a fairy in the garden of
paradise could be. She smiled as he bent over her, and he saw tears
trembling out of her beautiful eyelashes. "Do you weep for me? " he
whispered. "Oh weep not, thou loveliest of women. Now do I begin to
understand the happiness of paradise; I feel it to my inmost soul,
in every thought. A new life is born within me. One moment of such
happiness is worth an eternity of darkness and woe. " He stooped and
kissed the tears from her eyes, and touched her lips with his.
A clap of thunder, loud and awful, resounded through the trembling
air. All around him fell into ruin. The lovely fairy, the beautiful
garden, sunk deeper and deeper. The prince saw it sinking down in
the dark night till it shone only like a star in the distance
beneath him. Then he felt a coldness, like death, creeping over him;
his eyes closed, and he became insensible.
When he recovered, a chilling rain was beating upon him, and a
sharp wind blew on his head. "Alas! what have I done? " he sighed; "I
have sinned like Adam, and the garden of paradise has sunk into the
earth. " He opened his eyes, and saw the star in the distance, but it
was the morning star in heaven which glittered in the darkness.
Presently he stood up and found himself in the depths of the
forest, close to the cavern of the Winds, and the mother of the
Winds sat by his side. She looked angry, and raised her arm in the air
as she spoke. "The very first evening! " she said. "Well, I expected
it! If you were my son, you should go into the sack. "
"And there he will have to go at last," said a strong old man,
with large black wings, and a scythe in his hand, whose name was
Death. "He shall be laid in his coffin, but not yet. I will allow
him to wander about the world for a while, to atone for his sin, and
to give him time to become better. But I shall return when he least
expects me. I shall lay him in a black coffin, place it on my head,
and fly away with it beyond the stars. There also blooms a garden of
paradise, and if he is good and pious he will be admitted; but if
his thoughts are bad, and his heart is full of sin, he will sink
with his coffin deeper than the garden of paradise has sunk. Once in
every thousand years I shall go and fetch him, when he will either
be condemned to sink still deeper, or be raised to a happier life in
the world beyond the stars. "
THE PEA BLOSSOM
There were once five peas in one shell, they were green, the shell
was green, and so they believed that the whole world must be green
also, which was a very natural conclusion. The shell grew, and the
peas grew, they accommodated themselves to their position, and sat all
in a row. The sun shone without and warmed the shell, and the rain
made it clear and transparent; it was mild and agreeable in broad
daylight, and dark at night, as it generally is; and the peas as
they sat there grew bigger and bigger, and more thoughtful as they
mused, for they felt there must be something else for them to do.
"Are we to sit here forever? " asked one; "shall we not become hard
by sitting so long? It seems to me there must be something outside,
and I feel sure of it. "
And as weeks passed by, the peas became yellow, and the shell
became yellow.
"All the world is turning yellow, I suppose," said they,--and
perhaps they were right.
Suddenly they felt a pull at the shell; it was torn off, and
held in human hands, then slipped into the pocket of a jacket in
company with other full pods.
"Now we shall soon be opened," said one,--just what they all
wanted.
"I should like to know which of us will travel furthest," said the
smallest of the five; "we shall soon see now. "
"What is to happen will happen," said the largest pea.
"Crack" went the shell as it burst, and the five peas rolled out
into the bright sunshine. There they lay in a child's hand. A little
boy was holding them tightly, and said they were fine peas for his
pea-shooter. And immediately he put one in and shot it out.
"Now I am flying out into the wide world," said he; "catch me if
you can;" and he was gone in a moment.
"I," said the second, "intend to fly straight to the sun, that
is a shell that lets itself be seen, and it will suit me exactly;" and
away he went.
"We will go to sleep wherever we find ourselves," said the two
next, "we shall still be rolling onwards;" and they did certainly fall
on the floor, and roll about before they got into the pea-shooter; but
they were put in for all that. "We shall go farther than the
others," said they.
"What is to happen will happen," exclaimed the last, as he was
shot out of the pea-shooter; and as he spoke he flew up against an old
board under a garret-window, and fell into a little crevice, which was
almost filled up with moss and soft earth. The moss closed itself
round him, and there he lay, a captive indeed, but not unnoticed by
God.
"What is to happen will happen," said he to himself.
Within the little garret lived a poor woman, who went out to clean
stoves, chop wood into small pieces and perform such-like hard work,
for she was strong and industrious. Yet she remained always poor,
and at home in the garret lay her only daughter, not quite grown up,
and very delicate and weak. For a whole year she had kept her bed, and
it seemed as if she could neither live nor die.
"She is going to her little sister," said the woman; "I had but
the two children, and it was not an easy thing to support both of
them; but the good God helped me in my work, and took one of them to
Himself and provided for her. Now I would gladly keep the other that
was left to me, but I suppose they are not to be separated, and my
sick girl will very soon go to her sister above. " But the sick girl
still remained where she was, quietly and patiently she lay all the
day long, while her mother was away from home at her work.
Spring came, and one morning early the sun shone brightly
through the little window, and threw its rays over the floor of the
room. Just as the mother was going to her work, the sick girl fixed
her gaze on the lowest pane of the window--"Mother," she exclaimed,
"what can that little green thing be that peeps in at the window? It
is moving in the wind. "
The mother stepped to the window and half opened it. "Oh! " she
said, "there is actually a little pea which has taken root and is
putting out its green leaves. How could it have got into this crack?
Well now, here is a little garden for you to amuse yourself with. "
So the bed of the sick girl was drawn nearer to the window, that she
might see the budding plant; and the mother went out to her work.
"Mother, I believe I shall get well," said the sick child in the
evening, "the sun has shone in here so brightly and warmly to-day, and
the little pea is thriving so well: I shall get on better, too, and go
out into the warm sunshine again. "
"God grant it! " said the mother, but she did not believe it
would be so. But she propped up with the little stick the green
plant which had given her child such pleasant hopes of life, so that
it might not be broken by the winds; she tied the piece of string to
the window-sill and to the upper part of the frame, so that the
pea-tendrils might twine round it when it shot up. And it did shoot
up, indeed it might almost be seen to grow from day to day.
"Now really here is a flower coming," said the old woman one
morning, and now at last she began to encourage the hope that her sick
daughter might really recover. She remembered that for some time the
child had spoken more cheerfully, and during the last few days had
raised herself in bed in the morning to look with sparkling eyes at
her little garden which contained only a single pea-plant. A week
after, the invalid sat up for the first time a whole hour, feeling
quite happy by the open window in the warm sunshine, while outside
grew the little plant, and on it a pink pea-blossom in full bloom. The
little maiden bent down and gently kissed the delicate leaves. This
day was to her like a festival.
"Our heavenly Father Himself has planted that pea, and made it
grow and flourish, to bring joy to you and hope to me, my blessed
child," said the happy mother, and she smiled at the flower, as if
it had been an angel from God.
But what became of the other peas? Why the one who flew out into
the wide world, and said, "Catch me if you can," fell into a gutter
on the roof of a house, and ended his travels in the crop of a
pigeon. The two lazy ones were carried quite as far, for they also
were eaten by pigeons, so they were at least of some use; but the
fourth, who wanted to reach the sun, fell into a sink and lay there
in the dirty water for days and weeks, till he had swelled to a great
size.
"I am getting beautifully fat," said the pea, "I expect I shall
burst at last; no pea could do more that that, I think; I am the
most remarkable of all the five which were in the shell. " And the sink
confirmed the opinion.
But the young maiden stood at the open garret window, with
sparkling eyes and the rosy hue of health on her cheeks, she folded
her thin hands over the pea-blossom, and thanked God for what He had
done.
"I," said the sink, "shall stand up for my pea. "
THE PEN AND THE INKSTAND
In a poet's room, where his inkstand stood on the table, the
remark was once made, "It is wonderful what can be brought out of an
inkstand. What will come next? It is indeed wonderful. "
"Yes, certainly," said the inkstand to the pen, and to the other
articles that stood on the table; "that's what I always say. It is
wonderful and extraordinary what a number of things come out of me.
It's quite incredible, and I really don't know what is coming next
when that man dips his pen into me. One drop out of me is enough for
half a page of paper, and what cannot half a page contain? From me,
all the works of a poet are produced; all those imaginary characters
whom people fancy they have known or met. All the deep feeling, the
humor, and the vivid pictures of nature. I myself don't understand how
it is, for I am not acquainted with nature, but it is certainly in me.
From me have gone forth to the world those wonderful descriptions of
troops of charming maidens, and of brave knights on prancing steeds;
of the halt and the blind, and I know not what more, for I assure
you I never think of these things. "
"There you are right," said the pen, "for you don't think at
all; if you did, you would see that you can only provide the means.
You give the fluid that I may place upon the paper what dwells in
me, and what I wish to bring to light. It is the pen that writes: no
man doubts that; and, indeed, most people understand as much about
poetry as an old inkstand. "
"You have had very little experience," replied the inkstand.
"You have hardly been in service a week, and are already half worn
out. Do you imagine you are a poet? You are only a servant, and before
you came I had many like you, some of the goose family, and others
of English manufacture. I know a quill pen as well as I know a steel
one. I have had both sorts in my service, and I shall have many more
when he comes--the man who performs the mechanical part--and writes
down what he obtains from me. I should like to know what will be the
next thing he gets out of me. "
"Inkpot! " exclaimed the pen contemptuously.
Late in the evening the poet came home. He had been to a
concert, and had been quite enchanted with the admirable performance
of a famous violin player whom he had heard there. The performer had
produced from his instrument a richness of tone that sometimes sounded
like tinkling waterdrops or rolling pearls; sometimes like the birds
twittering in chorus, and then rising and swelling in sound like the
wind through the fir-trees. The poet felt as if his own heart were
weeping, but in tones of melody like the sound of a woman's voice.
It seemed not only the strings, but every part of the instrument
from which these sounds were produced. It was a wonderful
performance and a difficult piece, and yet the bow seemed to glide
across the strings so easily that it was as if any one could do it who
tried. Even the violin and the bow appeared to perform independently
of their master who guided them; it was as if soul and spirit had been
breathed into the instrument, so the audience forgot the performer
in the beautiful sounds he produced. Not so the poet; he remembered
him, and named him, and wrote down his thoughts on the subject. "How
foolish it would be for the violin and the bow to boast of their
performance, and yet we men often commit that folly. The poet, the
artist, the man of science in his laboratory, the general,--we all
do it; and yet we are only the instruments which the Almighty uses; to
Him alone the honor is due. We have nothing of ourselves of which we
should be proud. " Yes, this is what the poet wrote down. He wrote it
in the form of a parable, and called it "The Master and the
Instruments. "
"That is what you have got, madam," said the pen to the
inkstand, when the two were alone again. "Did you hear him read
aloud what I had written down? "
"Yes, what I gave you to write," retorted the inkstand. "That
was a cut at you because of your conceit. To think that you could
not understand that you were being quizzed. I gave you a cut from
within me. Surely I must know my own satire. "
"Ink-pitcher! " cried the pen.
"Writing-stick! " retorted the inkstand. And each of them felt
satisfied that he had given a good answer. It is pleasing to be
convinced that you have settled a matter by your reply; it is
something to make you sleep well, and they both slept well upon it.
But the poet did not sleep. Thoughts rose up within him like the
tones of the violin, falling like pearls, or rushing like the strong
wind through the forest. He understood his own heart in these
thoughts; they were as a ray from the mind of the Great Master of all
minds.
"To Him be all the honor. "
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Far away towards the east, in India, which seemed in those days
the world's end, stood the Tree of the Sun; a noble tree, such as we
have never seen, and perhaps never may see.
The summit of this tree spread itself for miles like an entire
forest, each of its smaller branches forming a complete tree. Palms,
beech-trees, pines, plane-trees, and various other kinds, which are
found in all parts of the world, were here like small branches,
shooting forth from the great tree; while the larger boughs, with
their knots and curves, formed valleys and hills, clothed with velvety
green and covered with flowers. Everywhere it was like a blooming
meadow or a lovely garden. Here were birds from all quarters of the
world assembled together; birds from the primeval forests of
America, from the rose gardens of Damascus, and from the deserts of
Africa, in which the elephant and the lion may boast of being the only
rulers. Birds from the Polar regions came flying here, and of course
the stork and the swallow were not absent. But the birds were not
the only living creatures. There were stags, squirrels, antelopes, and
hundreds of other beautiful and light-footed animals here found a
home.
The summit of the tree was a wide-spreading garden, and in the
midst of it, where the green boughs formed a kind of hill, stood a
castle of crystal, with a view from it towards every quarter of
heaven. Each tower was erected in the form of a lily, and within the
stern was a winding staircase, through which one could ascend to the
top and step out upon the leaves as upon balconies. The calyx of the
flower itself formed a most beautiful, glittering, circular hall,
above which no other roof arose than the blue firmament and the sun
and stars.
Just as much splendor, but of another kind, appeared below, in the
wide halls of the castle.
Here, on the walls, were reflected
pictures of the world, which represented numerous and varied scenes of
everything that took place daily, so that it was useless to read the
newspapers, and indeed there were none to be obtained in this spot.
All was to be seen in living pictures by those who wished it, but
all would have been too much for even the wisest man, and this man
dwelt here. His name is very difficult; you would not be able to
pronounce it, so it may be omitted. He knew everything that a man on
earth can know or imagine. Every invention already in existence or yet
to be, was known to him, and much more; still everything on earth
has a limit. The wise king Solomon was not half so wise as this man.
He could govern the powers of nature and held sway over potent
spirits; even Death itself was obliged to give him every morning a
list of those who were to die during the day. And King Solomon himself
had to die at last, and this fact it was which so often occupied the
thoughts of this great man in the castle on the Tree of the Sun. He
knew that he also, however high he might tower above other men in
wisdom, must one day die. He knew that his children would fade away
like the leaves of the forest and become dust. He saw the human race
wither and fall like leaves from the tree; he saw new men come to fill
their places, but the leaves that fell off never sprouted forth again;
they crumbled to dust or were absorbed into other plants.
"What happens to man," asked the wise man of himself, "when
touched by the angel of death? What can death be? The body decays, and
the soul. Yes; what is the soul, and whither does it go? "
"To eternal life," says the comforting voice of religion.
"But what is this change? Where and how shall we exist? "
"Above; in heaven," answers the pious man; "it is there we hope to
go. "
"Above! " repeated the wise man, fixing his eyes upon the moon
and stars above him. He saw that to this earthly sphere above and
below were constantly changing places, and that the position varied
according to the spot on which a man found himself. He knew, also,
that even if he ascended to the top of the highest mountain which
rears its lofty summit on this earth, the air, which to us seems clear
and transparent, would there be dark and cloudy; the sun would have
a coppery glow and send forth no rays, and our earth would lie beneath
him wrapped in an orange-colored mist. How narrow are the limits which
confine the bodily sight, and how little can be seen by the eye of the
soul. How little do the wisest among us know of that which is so
important to us all.
In the most secret chamber of the castle lay the greatest treasure
on earth--the Book of Truth. The wise man had read it through page
after page. Every man may read in this book, but only in fragments. To
many eyes the characters seem so mixed in confusion that the words
cannot be distinguished. On certain pages the writing often appears so
pale or so blurred that the page becomes a blank. The wiser a man
becomes, the more he will read, and those who are wisest read most.
The wise man knew how to unite the sunlight and the moonlight with
the light of reason and the hidden powers of nature; and through
this stronger light, many things in the pages were made clear to
him. But in the portion of the book entitled "Life after Death" not
a single point could he see distinctly. This pained him. Should he
never be able here on earth to obtain a light by which everything
written in the Book of Truth should become clear to him? Like the wise
King Solomon, he understood the language of animals, and could
interpret their talk into song; but that made him none the wiser. He
found out the nature of plants and metals, and their power in curing
diseases and arresting death, but none to destroy death itself. In all
created things within his reach he sought the light that should
shine upon the certainty of an eternal life, but he found it not.
The Book of Truth lay open before him, but, its pages were to him as
blank paper. Christianity placed before him in the Bible a promise
of eternal life, but he wanted to read it in his book, in which
nothing on the subject appeared to be written.
He had five children; four sons, educated as the children of
such a wise father should be, and a daughter, fair, gentle, and
intelligent, but she was blind; yet this deprivation appeared as
nothing to her; her father and brothers were outward eyes to her,
and a vivid imagination made everything clear to her mental sight. The
sons had never gone farther from the castle than the branches of the
trees extended, and the sister had scarcely ever left home. They
were happy children in that home of their childhood, the beautiful and
fragrant Tree of the Sun. Like all children, they loved to hear
stories related to them, and their father told them many things
which other children would not have understood; but these were as
clever as most grownup people are among us. He explained to them
what they saw in the pictures of life on the castle walls--the
doings of man, and the progress of events in all the lands of the
earth; and the sons often expressed a wish that they could be present,
and take a part in these great deeds. Then their father told them that
in the world there was nothing but toil and difficulty: that it was
not quite what it appeared to them, as they looked upon it in their
beautiful home. He spoke to them of the true, the beautiful, and the
good, and told them that these three held together in the world, and
by that union they became crystallized into a precious jewel,
clearer than a diamond of the first water--a jewel, whose splendor had
a value even in the sight of God, in whose brightness all things are
dim. This jewel was called the philosopher's stone. He told them that,
by searching, man could attain to a knowledge of the existence of God,
and that it was in the power of every man to discover the certainty
that such a jewel as the philosopher's stone really existed. This
information would have been beyond the perception of other children;
but these children understood, and others will learn to comprehend its
meaning after a time. They questioned their father about the true, the
beautiful, and the good, and he explained it to them in many ways.
He told them that God, when He made man out of the dust of the
earth, touched His work five times, leaving five intense feelings,
which we call the five senses. Through these, the true, the beautiful,
and the good are seen, understood, and perceived, and through these
they are valued, protected, and encouraged. Five senses have been
given mentally and corporeally, inwardly and outwardly, to body and
soul.
The children thought deeply on all these things, and meditated
upon them day and night. Then the eldest of the brothers dreamt a
splendid dream. Strange to say, not only the second brother but also
the third and fourth brothers all dreamt exactly the same thing;
namely, that each went out into the world to find the philosopher's
stone. Each dreamt that he found it, and that, as he rode back on
his swift horse, in the morning dawn, over the velvety green
meadows, to his home in the castle of his father, that the stone
gleamed from his forehead like a beaming light; and threw such a
bright radiance upon the pages of the Book of Truth that every word
was illuminated which spoke of the life beyond the grave. But the
sister had no dream of going out into the wide world; it never entered
her mind. Her world was her father's house.
"I shall ride forth into the wide world," said the eldest brother.
"I must try what life is like there, as I mix with men. I will
practise only the good and true; with these I will protect the
beautiful. Much shall be changed for the better while I am there. "
Now these thoughts were great and daring, as our thoughts
generally are at home, before we have gone out into the world, and
encountered its storms and tempests, its thorns and its thistles. In
him, and in all his brothers, the five senses were highly
cultivated, inwardly and outwardly; but each of them had one sense
which in keenness and development surpassed the other four. In the
case of the eldest, this pre-eminent sense was sight, which he hoped
would be of special service. He had eyes for all times and all people;
eyes that could discover in the depths of the earth hidden
treasures, and look into the hearts of men, as through a pane of
glass; he could read more than is often seen on the cheek that blushes
or grows pale, in the eye that droops or smiles. Stags and antelopes
accompanied him to the western boundary of his home, and there he
found the wild swans. These he followed, and found himself far away in
the north, far from the land of his father, which extended eastward to
the ends of the earth. How he opened his eyes with astonishment! How
many things were to be seen here! and so different to the mere
representation of pictures such as those in his father's house. At
first he nearly lost his eyes in astonishment at the rubbish and
mockery brought forward to represent the beautiful; but he kept his
eyes, and soon found full employment for them. He wished to go
thoroughly and honestly to work in his endeavor to understand the
true, the beautiful, and the good. But how were they represented in
the world? He observed that the wreath which rightly belonged to the
beautiful was often given the hideous; that the good was often
passed by unnoticed, while mediocrity was applauded, when it should
have been hissed. People look at the dress, not at the wearer; thought
more of a name than of doing their duty; and trusted more to
reputation than to real service. It was everywhere the same.
"I see I must make a regular attack on these things," said he; and
he accordingly did not spare them. But while looking for the truth,
came the evil one, the father of lies, to intercept him. Gladly
would the fiend have plucked out the eyes of this Seer, but that would
have been a too straightforward path for him; he works more cunningly.
He allowed the young man to seek for, and discover, the beautiful
and the good; but while he was contemplating them, the evil spirit
blew one mote after another into each of his eyes; and such a
proceeding would injure the strongest sight. Then he blew upon the
motes, and they became beams, so that the clearness of his sight was
gone, and the Seer was like a blind man in the world, and had no
longer any faith in it. He had lost his good opinion of the world,
as well as of himself; and when a man gives up the world, and
himself too, it is all over with him.
"All over," said the wild swan, who flew across the sea to the
east.
"All over," twittered the swallows, who were also flying
eastward towards the Tree of the Sun. It was no good news which they
carried home.
"I think the Seer has been badly served," said the second brother,
"but the Hearer may be more successful. "
This one possessed the sense of hearing to a very high degree:
so acute was this sense, that it was said he could hear the grass
grow. He took a fond leave of all at home, and rode away, provided
with good abilities and good intentions. The swallows escorted him,
and he followed the swans till he found himself out in the world,
and far away from home. But he soon discovered that one may have too
much of a good thing. His hearing was too fine. He not only heard
the grass grow, but could hear every man's heart beat, whether in
sorrow or in joy. The whole world was to him like a clockmaker's great
workshop, in which all the clocks were going "tick, tick," and all the
turret clocks striking "ding, dong. " It was unbearable. For a long
time his ears endured it, but at last all the noise and tumult
became too much for one man to bear.
There were rascally boys of sixty years old--for years do not
alone make a man--who raised a tumult, which might have made the
Hearer laugh, but for the applause which followed, echoing through
every street and house, and was even heard in country roads. Falsehood
thrust itself forward and played the hypocrite; the bells on the
fool's cap jingled, and declared they were church-bells, and the noise
became so bad for the Hearer that he thrust his fingers into his ears.
Still, he could hear false notes and bad singing, gossip and idle
words, scandal and slander, groaning and moaning, without and
within. "Heaven help us! " He thrust his fingers farther and farther
into his ears, till at last the drums burst. And now he could hear
nothing more of the true, the beautiful, and the good; for his hearing
was to have been the means by which he hoped to acquire his knowledge.
He became silent and suspicious, and at last trusted no one, not
even himself, and no longer hoping to find and bring home the costly
jewel, he gave it up, and gave himself up too, which was worse than
all.
The birds in their flight towards the east, carried the tidings,
and the news reached the castle in the Tree of the Sun.
"I will try now," said the third brother; "I have a keen nose. "
Now that was not a very elegant expression, but it was his way, and we
must take him as he was. He had a cheerful temper, and was, besides, a
real poet; he could make many things appear poetical, by the way in
which he spoke of them, and ideas struck him long before they occurred
to the minds of others. "I can smell," he would say; and he attributed
to the sense of smelling, which he possessed in a high degree, a great
power in the region of the beautiful. "I can smell," he would say,
"and many places are fragrant or beautiful according to the taste of
the frequenters. One man feels at home in the atmosphere of the
tavern, among the flaring tallow candles, and when the smell of
spirits mingles with the fumes of bad tobacco. Another prefers sitting
amidst the overpowering scent of jasmine, or perfuming himself with
scented olive oil. This man seeks the fresh sea breeze, while that one
climbs the lofty mountain-top, to look down upon the busy life in
miniature beneath him. "
As he spoke in this way, it seemed as if he had already been out
in the world, as if he had already known and associated with man.
But this experience was intuitive--it was the poetry within him, a
gift from Heaven bestowed on him in his cradle. He bade farewell to
his parental roof in the Tree of the Sun, and departed on foot, from
the pleasant scenes that surrounded his home. Arrived at its confines,
he mounted on the back of an ostrich, which runs faster than a
horse, and afterwards, when he fell in with the wild swans, he swung
himself on the strongest of them, for he loved change, and away he
flew over the sea to distant lands, where there were great forests,
deep lakes, lofty mountains, and proud cities. Wherever he came it
seemed as if sunshine travelled with him across the fields, for
every flower, every bush, exhaled a renewed fragrance, as if conscious
that a friend and protector was near; one who understood them, and
knew their value. The stunted rose-bush shot forth twigs, unfolded its
leaves, and bore the most beautiful roses; every one could see it, and
even the black, slimy wood-snail noticed its beauty. "I will give my
seal to the flower," said the snail, "I have trailed my slime upon it,
I can do no more.
"Thus it always fares with the beautiful in this world," said
the poet. And he made a song upon it, and sung it after his own
fashion, but nobody listened. Then he gave a drummer twopence and a
peacock's feather, and composed a song for the drum, and the drummer
beat it through the streets of the town, and when the people heard
it they said, "That is a capital tune. " The poet wrote many songs
about the true, the beautiful, and the good. His songs were listened
to in the tavern, where the tallow candles flared, in the fresh clover
field, in the forest, and on the high-seas; and it appeared as if this
brother was to be more fortunate than the other two.
But the evil spirit was angry at this, so he set to work with soot
and incense, which he can mix so artfully as to confuse an angel,
and how much more easily a poor poet. The evil one knew how to
manage such people. He so completely surrounded the poet with
incense that the man lost his head, forgot his mission and his home,
and at last lost himself and vanished in smoke.
But when the little birds heard of it, they mourned, and for three
days they sang not one song. The black wood-snail became blacker
still; not for grief, but for envy. "They should have offered me
incense," he said, "for it was I who gave him the idea of the most
famous of his songs--the drum song of 'The Way of the World;' and it
was I who spat at the rose; I can bring a witness to that fact. "
But no tidings of all this reached the poet's home in India. The
birds had all been silent for three days, and when the time of
mourning was over, so deep had been their grief, that they had
forgotten for whom they wept. Such is the way of the world.
"Now I must go out into the world, and disappear like the rest,"
said the fourth brother. He was as good-tempered as the third, but
no poet, though he could be witty.
The two eldest had filled the castle with joyfulness, and now
the last brightness was going away. Sight and hearing have always been
considered two of the chief senses among men, and those which they
wish to keep bright; the other senses are looked upon as of less
importance.
But the younger son had a different opinion; he had cultivated his
taste in every way, and taste is very powerful. It rules over what
goes into the mouth, as well as over all which is presented to the
mind; and, consequently, this brother took upon himself to taste
everything stored up in bottles or jars; this he called the rough part
of his work. Every man's mind was to him as a vessel in which
something was concocting; every land a kind of mental kitchen.
"There are no delicacies here," he said; so he wished to go out into
the world to find something delicate to suit his taste. "Perhaps
fortune may be more favorable to me than it was to my brothers. I
shall start on my travels, but what conveyance shall I choose? Are air
balloons invented yet? " he asked of his father, who knew of all
inventions that had been made, or would be made.
Air balloons had not then been invented, nor steam-ships, nor
railways.
"Good," said he; "then I shall choose an air balloon; my father
knows how they are to be made and guided. Nobody has invented one yet,
and the people will believe that it is an aerial phantom. When I
have done with the balloon I shall burn it, and for this purpose,
you must give me a few pieces of another invention, which will come
next; I mean a few chemical matches. "
He obtained what he wanted, and flew away. The birds accompanied
him farther than they had the other brothers. They were curious to
know how this flight would end. Many more of them came swooping
down; they thought it must be some new bird, and he soon had a
goodly company of followers. They came in clouds till the air became
darkened with birds as it was with the cloud of locusts over the
land of Egypt.
And now he was out in the wide world. The balloon descended over
one of the greatest cities, and the aeronaut took up his station at
the highest point, on the church steeple. The balloon rose again
into the air, which it ought not to have done; what became of it is
not known, neither is it of any consequence, for balloons had not then
been invented.
There he sat on the church steeple. The birds no longer hovered
over him; they had got tired of him, and he was tired of them. All the
chimneys in the town were smoking.
"There are altars erected to my honor," said the wind, who
wished to say something agreeable to him as he sat there boldly
looking down upon the people in the street. There was one stepping
along, proud of his purse; another, of the key he carried behind
him, though he had nothing to lock up; another took a pride in his
moth-eaten coat; and another, in his mortified body. "Vanity, all
vanity! " he exclaimed. "I must go down there by-and-by, and touch
and taste; but I shall sit here a little while longer, for the wind
blows pleasantly at my back. I shall remain here as long as the wind
blows, and enjoy a little rest. It is comfortable to sleep late in the
morning when one had a great deal to do," said the sluggard; "so I
shall stop here as long as the wind blows, for it pleases me. "
And there he stayed. But as he was sitting on the weather-cock
of the steeple, which kept turning round and round with him, he was
under the false impression that the same wind still blew, and that
he could stay where he was without expense.
But in India, in the castle on the Tree of the Sun, all was
solitary and still, since the brothers had gone away one after the
other.
"Nothing goes well with them," said the father; "they will never
bring the glittering jewel home, it is not made for me; they are all
dead and gone. " Then he bent down over the Book of Truth, and gazed on
the page on which he should have read of the life after death, but for
him there was nothing to be read or learned upon it.
His blind daughter was his consolation and joy; she clung to him
with sincere affection, and for the sake of his happiness and peace
she wished the costly jewel could be found and brought home.
With longing tenderness she thought of her brothers. Where were
they? Where did they live? How she wished she might dream of them; but
it was strange that not even in dreams could she be brought near to
them. But at last one night she dreamt that she heard the voices of
her brothers calling to her from the distant world, and she could
not refrain herself, but went out to them, and yet it seemed in her
dream that she still remained in her father's house. She did not see
her brothers, but she felt as it were a fire burning in her hand,
which, however, did not hurt her, for it was the jewel she was
bringing to her father. When she awoke she thought for a moment that
she still held the stone, but she only grasped the knob of her
distaff.
During the long evenings she had spun constantly, and round the
distaff were woven threads finer than the web of a spider; human
eyes could never have distinguished these threads when separated
from each other. But she had wetted them with her tears, and the twist
was as strong as a cable. She rose with the impression that her
dream must be a reality, and her resolution was taken.
It was still night, and her father slept; she pressed a kiss
upon his hand, and then took her distaff and fastened the end of the
thread to her father's house. But for this, blind as she was, she
would never have found her way home again; to this thread she must
hold fast, and trust not to others or even to herself. From the Tree
of the Sun she broke four leaves; which she gave up to the wind and
the weather, that they might be carried to her brothers as letters and
a greeting, in case she did not meet them in the wide world. Poor
blind child, what would become of her in those distant regions? But
she had the invisible thread, to which she could hold fast; and she
possessed a gift which all the others lacked. This was a determination
to throw herself entirely into whatever she undertook, and it made her
feel as if she had eyes even at the tips of her fingers, and could
hear down into her very heart. Quietly she went forth into the
noisy, bustling, wonderful world, and wherever she went the skies grew
bright, and she felt the warm sunbeam, and a rainbow above in the blue
heavens seemed to span the dark world. She heard the song of the
birds, and smelt the scent of the orange groves and apple orchards
so strongly that she seemed to taste it. Soft tones and charming songs
reached her ear, as well as harsh sounds and rough words--thoughts and
opinions in strange contradiction to each other. Into the deepest
recesses of her heart penetrated the echoes of human thoughts and
feelings. Now she heard the following words sadly sung,--
"Life is a shadow that flits away
In a night of darkness and woe. "
But then would follow brighter thoughts:
"Life has the rose's sweet perfume
With sunshine, light, and joy. "
And if one stanza sounded painfully--
"Each mortal thinks of himself alone,
Is a truth, alas, too clearly known;"
Then, on the other hand, came the answer--
"Love, like a mighty flowing stream,
Fills every heart with its radiant gleam. "
She heard, indeed, such words as these--
"In the pretty turmoil here below,
All is a vain and paltry show.
Then came also words of comfort--
"Great and good are the actions done
By many whose worth is never known. "
And if sometimes the mocking strain reached her--
"Why not join in the jesting cry
That contemns all gifts from the throne on high?
