Adele M. Fielde (Chinese Nights Entertainment, 1893)Adele M. Fielde (Chinese Nights Entertainment, 1893)
THERE was once a pious rich man, who spent his time and used his wealth in worship of the gods. As he gave his mind to methods of obeisance, and his money to the purchase of oblations, he, in the course of years, became poor, and was obliged to consider how he should support his wife and his three young sons. When he found that he could get no lucrative employment near home, he sold all his property except his house, and embarked in a trading expedition to a distant country. On the voyage his junk was wrecked, his goods were lost, and he was cast destitute upon an island that had but few inhabitants. From these he begged food and raiment, but no one showed compassion on him except an apparent outcast, who gave him a hat, a cloak, and a basket, telling him that the hat, when held before his breast, would render him invisible ; the cloak, extended by his arms, would enable him to fly over water; and the basket, when tapped by his fingers, would fill with gems. He took the gifts, and found that they had the virtues described. The hat permitted him to partake unseen of the best cheer in any house; the cloak carried him across seas; and the basket furnished him with means of supplying all his other needs.
On reaching home, he learned that his wife had died during his long absence. His three sons had grown tall, wise, and comely, and the fond father secretly used his three talismans for their benefit, so that they soon had vast wealth in land, houses, and coin. After several years, when he knew that he was about to die from old age, he called his sons to his bedside, and gave to each a talisman. To the eldest he gave the cloak, to the second the hat, and to the youngest and best beloved he gave the basket. To each son he pointed out the dangers incurred by a misuse of his possession, and upon the youngest, especially, he urged the necessity for labor and frugality, as a means of developing a correct character. The young man listened respectfully to his father's exhortation, and declared that, while he would carefully heed it, he would also, by means of his basket, win a princess in marriage.
After the old man's funeral, the youngest son went away to the capital, sought out the portion of the palace occupied by the emperor's beautiful daughter, secured the attention of a handmaiden, and sent word to the princess that he had gems of extraordinary size and beauty which he wished to lay before her eyes. The maid gave such a glowing account of the jewels that the princess sent her out to bring them to her, and was so pleased on beholding them that she kept them all, with the basket that held them, and returned to the owner a sum of money which she thought a sufficient compensation for them. As there was no witness to the transaction, the young man asked in vain for the return of his basket, and was finally obliged to go away without it, to avoid being arrested as a disturber of the imperial peace. His means of living being gone, he begged his way over the long road homeward, told his brothers what had happened, and besought them to lend him the hat and cloak, that he might go back and recover his lost treasure. After making many objections against lending their goods to one who had proved, incapable of keeping his own, they yielded to his arguments, and entrusted to him their talismans, and he went again to the capital. There he haunted the doors of the palace, awaiting opportunity to steal in and find his basket; but he was discovered at a moment when he had his hat on his head instead of before his breast, and being recognized as the man who had formerly been trouble- some, he was seized, stripped, beaten, and driven beyond the gates. Bruised, despairing, and ashamed to return to his brothers, he wandered off to the deep glens of the mountains. There he became famished, and looked about for something to satisfy his hunger. He perceived two clumps of banana trees, with two bunches of fruit, the one bunch yellow and ripe, the other bunch green and shrivelled. He at once plucked and ate a ripe banana, but he had no sooner done so than his head began to ache, and, on putting up his hand, he felt a horn growing from his forehead. The horn grew fast, curled among the trees, and fastened him tightly to the spot. The horror of the situation was extreme, but did not prevent his becoming hungry again ; so when he could no longer endure starvation, he plucked and ate another ripe banana, with the same consequence. He then had a pair of long crooked horns, that he could neither break off nor tear from his skull. Fearing to eat more of fruit which produced such excrescences, he suffered hunger as long as he could while fruit was within reach, and then he plucked and ate one of the green bananas. No sooner had he done this than one horn began to dwindle, and then disappeared. He then ate another green banana, and the other horn also disappeared. Having recovered his natural condition, he bethought himself that, by making use of fruit having such qualities, he might perhaps regain his lost goods. He thereupon took two of each sort, returned to the palace disguised as an aged traveller, and caused the princess to be informed that he had come from genii-land with a. peculiar fruit which would give perpetual youth to whomsoever ate it. The princess sent her handmaid to negotiate for the fruit, and the handmaid, thinking it would be well for her to remain young along*with her mistress, bought the two yellow bananas, one of which she concealed in her sleeve, while she carried the other to the princess. The princess lost no time in devouring the fruit, and, while she was thus engaged, the hand- maiden swallowed hers on the way down stairs. A long horn sprang instantly from the head of the mistress and coiled among the posts of the divan on which she sat. A similar horn issued from the head of the maid and fastened her to the banisters of the stairs she was descending. The screams of the two brought the inmates of the palace about them, and, in the confusion, the vender of the fruit escaped into safe concealment.
The wearers of the horns were in sad plight. The horns were as sensitive as boils and as hard as stones. Renowned surgeons examined them and shrunk from attempting their reduction or excision. When the gods had been appealed to in vain, and when the court-physicians had all failed to give hope of relief, the emperor issued a proclamation, promising his daughter in marriage to any one who would remove the incubus from her head. Some time after the setting forth of this proclamation, the young man, in the guise of a physician, presented himself at the palace and was admitted to an audience with the emperor. In the conversation which ensued, the beauty, the refined manner, and the wisdom of the young doctor so favorably impressed the emperor that he made no objection to giving suitable vouchers that, if the horns were removed from the head of the afflicted princess and of her handmaiden, the payment therefore should be a legal marriage-contract between the princess and her physician. The young man then administered the green bananas and had the pleasure of seeing the horns disappear from the head of his bride and of her servant. The emperor kept his promise, and the princess soon accompanied her husband to his own home, carrying the basket, the cloak, and the hat, which were in due time transferred to their respective owners. From that time the family prospered, though the talismans gradually decayed.
The teacher, having finished his narration, Grouse re- marked that he did not think such talismans were nowadays bestowed, however needfully entreated of the gods ; but one would sometimes be greatly benefited by listening to other people's prayers. For instance, a great-uncle of his was one nightfall returning from town by a mountain path that led past the shrine of a local deity, and stopped to rearrange his bundles in a thicket beside the shrine. While there he over- heard the response of the god to the petition of a tiger that had come to ask direction toward good prey. The god told the tiger that in a certain hamlet a plump young woman would at moonrise go out from her dwelling to draw water from a well in her garden, and described the locality minutely that the tiger might not fail to find it. The hearer in the thicket identified in the description his own abode, and so hastened home and kept his wife safely indoors, and out of danger! Golden Branch said he should rely on hard work and prudence for success; though he thought luck had much to do with it, according with the old saying : " When luck goes, gold turns into iron ; when luck comes, brass turns into gold."
The teacher then called on the eldest of the boys for a story, and this pupil responded, saying that he had at the noon recess been into a shoe-shop, where a man who \vas cutting out soles complained that ants infested his leather, and then told about
THE ORIGIN OF ANTS.