Kitabı oku: «The Children's Tabernacle», sayfa 9

THE IRON RING

CHANG WANG was a Chinaman, and was reputed to be one of the shrewdest dealers in the Flowery Land. If making money fast be the test of cleverness, there was not a merchant in the province of Kwang Tung who had earned a better right to be called clever. Who owned so many fields of the tea-plant, who shipped so many bales of its leaves to the little island in the west, as did Chang Wang? It was whispered, indeed, that many of the bales contained green tea made by chopping up spoilt black tea-leaves, and coloring them with copper – a process likely to turn them into a mild kind of poison; but if the unwholesome trash found purchasers, Chang Wang never troubled himself with the thought whether any one might suffer in health from drinking his tea. So long as the dealer made money, he was content; and plenty of money he made.

But knowing how to make money is quite a different thing from knowing how to enjoy it. With all his ill-gotten gains, Chang Wang was a miserable man, for he had no heart to spend his silver pieces, even on his own comfort. The rich dealer lived in a hut which one of his own laborers might have despised; he dressed as a poor Tartar shepherd might have dressed when driving his flock. Chang Wang grudged himself even a hat to keep off the rays of the sun. Men laughed, and said that he would have cut off his own pigtail of plaited hair, if he could have sold it for the price of a dinner! Chang Wang was, in fact, a miser, and was rather proud than ashamed of the hateful vice of avarice.

Chang Wang had to make a journey to Macao, down the great river Yang-se-kiang, for purposes of trade. The question with the Chinaman now was in what way he should travel.

“Shall I hire a palanquin?” thought Chang Wang, stroking his thin moustaches; “no, a palanquin would cost too much money. Shall I take my passage in a trading vessel?” The rich trader shook his head, and the pigtail behind it, – such a passage would have to be paid for.

“I know what I’ll do,” said the miser to himself; “I’ll ask my uncle Fing Fang to take me in his fishing-boat down the great river. It is true that it will make my journey a long one, but then I shall make it for nothing. I’ll go to the fisherman Fing Fang, and settle the matter at once.”

The business was soon arranged, for Fing Fang would not refuse his rich nephew a seat in his boat. But he, like every one else, was disgusted at Chang Wang’s meanness; and as soon as the dealer had left his hovel, thus spoke Fing Fang to his sons, Ko and Jung:

“Here’s a fellow who has scraped up money enough to build a second porcelain tower, and he comes here to beg a free passage in a fishing-boat from an uncle whom he has never so much as asked to share a dish of his birds’-nests soup.”⁵

“Birds’-nests soup, indeed!” exclaimed Ko; “why, Chang Wang never indulges in luxuries such as that. If dogs’ flesh⁶ were not so cheap, he’d grudge himself the paw of a roasted puppy.”

“And what will Chang Wang make of all his money at last?” said Fing Fang more gravely; “he cannot carry it away with him when he dies.”

“Oh, he’s gathering it up for some one who will know how to spend it,” laughed Jung. “Chang Wang is merely fishing for others; what he gathers, they will enjoy.”

It was a bright, pleasant day when Chang Wang stepped into the boat of his uncle, to drop slowly down the great Yang-se-kiang. Many a civil word he said to Fing Fang and his sons, for civil words cost nothing. Chang Wang sat in the boat twisting the ends of his long moustaches, and thinking how much money each row of plants in his tea-fields might bring him. Presently, having finished his calculations, the miser turned to watch his relations, who were pursuing their fishing occupation in the way peculiar to China. Instead of rods, lines, or nets, the Fing Fang family was provided with trained cormorants, which are a kind of bird with a long neck, large appetite, and a particular fancy for fish.

It was curious to watch a bird diving down in the sunny water, and then suddenly come up again with a struggling fish in his bill. The fish was, however, always taken away from the cormorant, and thrown by one of the Fing Fangs into a well at the bottom of the boat.

“Cousin Ko,” said the miser, leaning forward to speak, “how is it that your clever cormorants never devour the fish they catch?”

“Cousin Chang Wang,” replied the young man, “dost thou not see that each bird has an iron ring round his neck, so that he cannot swallow? He only fishes for others.”

“Methinks the cormorant has a hard life of it,” observed the miser, smiling.

“He must wish his iron ring at the bottom of the Yang-se-kiang.”

Fing Fang, who had just let loose two young cormorants from the boat, turned round, and from his narrow slits of Chinese eyes looked keenly upon his nephew.

“Didst thou ever hear of a creature,” said he, “that puts an iron ring around his own neck?”

“There is no such creature in all the land that the Great Wall borders,” replied Chang Wang.

Fing Fang solemnly shook the pigtail which hung down his back. Like many of the Chinese, he had read a great deal, and was a kind of philosopher in his way.

“Nephew Chang Wang,” he observed, “I know of a creature (and he is not far off at this moment) who is always fishing for gain – constantly catching, but never enjoying. Avarice – the love of hoarding – is the iron ring round his neck; and so long as it stays there he is much like one of our trained cormorants – he may be clever, active, successful, but he is only fishing for others.”

I leave my readers to guess whether the sharp dealer understood his uncle’s meaning, or whether Chang Wang resolved in future not only to catch, but to enjoy. Fing Fang’s moral might be good enough for a Chinese heathen, but it does not go nearly far enough for an English Christian. If a miser is like a cormorant with an iron ring round his neck, the man or the child who lives for his own pleasure only, what is he but a greedy cormorant without the iron ring? Who would wish to resemble a cormorant at all? The bird knows the enjoyment of getting; let us prize the richer enjoyment of giving. Let me close with an English proverb, which I prefer to the Chinaman’s parable, – “Charity is the truest epicure; for she eats with many mouths.”

THE ILL WIND

“IT’S an ill wind that blaws naebody good, Master Harry – we maun say that,” observed old Ailsie, Mrs. Delmar’s Scotch nurse, as she went to close the window, through which rushed in the furious blast; “but I hae a dear laddie at sea, and when I hear the wind howl like that, I think” —

“Oh, shut the window, nurse! Quick, quick! or we’ll have the casement blown in!” cried Nina. “Did you ever hear such a gust!”

Ailsie shut the window, but not in time to prevent some pictures, which the little lady had been sorting, from being scattered in every direction over the room.

“Our fine larch has been blown down on the lawn,” cried Harry, who had sauntered up to the window.

“Oh, what a pity!” exclaimed his sister, as she went down on her knees to pick up the pictures. “Our beauty larch, that was planted only this spring, and that looked so lovely with its tassels of green! To think of the dreadful wind rooting up that! I’m sure that this at least is an ill wind, that blows nobody good.”

“You should see the mischief it has done in the wood,” observed Harry; “snapping off great branches as if they were twigs. The whole path through the wood is strewn with the boughs and the leaves.”

“I can’t bear the fierce wind,” exclaimed Nina. “When I was out half an hour ago I thought it would have blown me away. I really could scarcely keep my feet.”

“I could not keep my cap,” laughed Harry. “Off it scudded, whirling round and round right into the river, where I could watch it floating for ever so long. I shall never get it again.”

“Mischievous, horrid wind!” cried Nina, who had just picked up the last of her pictures.

“Oh, missie, ye maunna speak against the wind – for ye ken who sends it,” observed the old nurse. “It has its work to do as we hae ours. Depend on’t, the proverb is true, ‘It’s an ill wind that blaws naebody good.’”

“There’s no sense in that proverb,” said Harry, bluntly. “This wind does nothing but harm. It has snapped off the head of mamma’s beautiful favorite flower” —

“And smashed panes in her greenhouse,” added Nina.

It was indeed a furious wind that was blowing that evening, and as the night came on it seemed to increase. It rattled the shutters, it shrieked in the chimneys, it tore off some of the slates, and kept the children awake with its howling. The storm lulled, however, before the morning broke; and when the sun had risen, all was bright, calm, and serene.

“What a lovely morning after such a stormy night!” cried Nina, as with her brother Harry she rambled in the green wood, while old Ailsie followed behind them. “I never felt the air more sweet and fresh, and it seemed so heavy yesterday morning.”

“Ay, ay, the wind cleared the air,” observed Ailsie. “It’s an ill wind that blaws naebody good.”

“But think of your poor son at sea,” observed Harry.

“I was just thinking o’ him when I spake, Master Harry. I was thinking that maybe that verra wind was filling the sails o’ his ship, and blawing him hame all the faster, to cheer the eyes o’ his mither. It is sure to be in the right quarter for some one, let it blaw from north, south, east, or west.”

“Why, there’s little Ruth Laurie just before us,” cried Harry, as he turned a bend in the woodland path. “What a great bundle of fagots she is bravely carrying!”

“Let’s ask after her sick mother,” said Nina, running up to the orphan child, who was well known to the Delmars. Ruth dwelt with her mother in a very small cottage near the wood; and the children were allowed to visit the widow in her poor but respectful home.

“Blessings on the wee barefooted lassie!” exclaimed Ailsie; “I’ll be bound she’s been up with the lark, to gather up the broken branches which the wind has stripped from the trees.”

“That’s a heavy bundle for you to carry, Ruth!” said Harry; “it is almost as big as yourself.”

“I shouldn’t mind carrying it were it twice as heavy and big,” cried the peasant child, looking up with a bright, happy smile. “Coals be terrible dear, and we’ve not a stick of wood left in the shed; and mother, she gets so chilly of an evening. There’s nothing she likes so well as a hot cup of tea and a good warm fire; your dear mamma gives us the tea, and you see I’ve the wood for boiling the water. Won’t mother be glad when she sees my big fagots; and wasn’t I pleased when I heard the wind blowing last night, for I knew I should find branches strewn about in the morning!”

“Ah,” cried Harry, “that reminds me of the proverb, ‘’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good.’”

“Harry,” whispered Nina to her brother, “don’t you think that you and I might help Ruth to fill her poor mother’s little wood-shed?”

“What! pick up sticks, and carry them in fagots on our backs? How funny that would look!” exclaimed Harry.

“We should be doing some good,” replied Nina. “Don’t you remember that nurse said that the wind has its work to do, as we have ours? If it’s an ill wind that does nobody good, it must be an ill child that does good to no one.”

Merrily and heartily Harry and Nina set about their labor of kindness. And cheerfully, as the children tripped along with their burdens to the poor woman’s cottage, Nina repeated her old nurse’s proverb, “’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good.”