Every part of it--bolts and beams and pillars, all were gold. In great
excitement the second brother climbed down from his wagon and began
pulling and wrenching at various parts of the bridge hoping to find some
loose pieces which he could break off. At last he succeeded in pulling
out four long bolts which were so heavy he could scarcely lift them.
After looking about in all directions to make sure that no one saw him,
he put them into his wagon and covered them up with straw. Then he drove
homewards as fast as he could.
"Ha! Ha!" he chuckled as he hid the golden bolts in the barn. "My son
will now be a richer man than my brother!"
He could scarcely sleep with thinking of his golden treasure and at the
first light of morning he slipped out to the barn. Imagine his rage when
he found in the straw four bolts of wood!
So that was all the second brother got for following the silver tracks.
Well, years went by and the Poor Man worked day after day and all day
and often far into the night. Some of his children died and the rest
grew up and went out into the world and married and made homes of their
own. Then at last his good wife died and the time came when the Poor Man
was old and all alone in the world.
One night as he sat on his doorstep thinking of his wife and of his
children when they were little and of all the years he had worked for
them to keep them fed and clothed, he happened to remember the Beggar
and the promise he had made to visit him sometime.
"And to think of all the years I've kept his golden horse-shoes and his
silver bolts! Well, he'll forgive me, I know," thought the Poor Man,
"for he'll understand that I've always been too busy up to this time
ever to follow the tracks of his cart. I wonder are they still there."
He went out to the roadside and peered down and how it happened I don't
know, but to his dim eyes at least there were the silver tracks as clear
as ever.
"Good!" cried the Poor Man. "To-morrow morning bright and early I'll
hitch up the donkey and visit my old friend, the Beggar!"
So the next day he took out the silver bolts and the golden horse-shoes
from the place where he had kept them hidden all these years and he put
them in a bag. Then he hitched his old donkey to his old cart and
started out to follow the silver tracks to the Beggar's home.
Well, he saw just exactly the same things that his brothers had seen
those many years before: all those terrible fighting animals and all
those unfortunate men.
"I'll have to remember and ask the Beggar what ails all these
creatures," he thought to himself.
Like his brothers he passed over the wooden bridge and the stone bridge
and the iron bridge and the copper bridge and the silver bridge and even
the golden bridge. Beyond the golden bridge he came to a Garden that was
surrounded by a high wall of diamonds and rubies and sapphires and all
kinds of precious stones that blazed as brightly as the sun itself. The
silver tracks turned in at the garden gate which was locked.
The poor man climbed down from his cart, unhitched the donkey, and set
him out to graze on the tender grass that grew by the wayside.
Then he took the bag that held the golden horse-shoes and the silver
bolts and he went to the garden gate. It was a very wonderful gate of
beaten gold set with precious stones. For a moment the Poor Man wondered
if he dare knock at so rich a gate, then he remembered that his friend
the Beggar was inside and he knew that he would be made welcome.
It was the Beggar himself who opened the gate. When he saw the Poor Man
he smiled and held out his hands and said:
"Welcome, dear friend! I have been waiting for you all these years! Come
in and I will show you my Garden."
So the Poor Man went inside. And first of all he gave the Beggar his
golden horse-shoes and his silver bolts.
"Forgive me," he said, "for keeping them so long, but I've never had
time until now to return them."
The Beggar smiled.
"I knew, dear friend, that they were safe with you and that you would
bring them some day."
Then the Beggar put his arm over the Poor Man's shoulder and led him
through the Garden showing him the wonderful golden fruits and beautiful
flowers. They sat them down beside a fountain of crystal water and while
they listened to the songs of glorious birds they talked together and
the Poor Man asked about the strange things he had seen along the road.
"All those animals," the Beggar said, "were once human beings who
instead of fearing God and being kind to their fellowmen passed all
their time fighting and cheating and cursing. The two sows were two
sisters-in-law who hated each other bitterly. The two bulls and the two
rams were neighbors who fought for years and years over the boundary
lines of their farms and now they keep on fighting through eternity. The
two bitches were two sisters who fought until they died over the
inheritance left them by their father. The old man whose hair the oxen
eat was a farmer who always pastured his cattle on his neighbors'
fields. Now he has his reward. The man at whose eyes the ravens peck was
an ungrateful son who mistreated his parents. The man with the awful
thirst that can never be quenched was a drunkard, and the one at whose
lips the apples turn to ashes was a glutton."
So they talked on together, the Poor Man and the Beggar, until it was
late afternoon and the Beggar said:
"And now, dear friend, you will sup with me as I once supped with you."
"Thank you," the Poor Man said, "I will. But let me first go out and see
how my donkey is."
"Very well," the Beggar said, "go. But be sure to come back for I shall
be waiting for you."
So the Poor Man went out the garden gate and looked for his donkey. But
the donkey was gone.
"He must have started home," the Poor Man thought. "I'll hurry and
overtake him."
So he started back afoot the way he had come. He went on and on but saw
no donkey. He crossed the golden bridge and the silver bridge and the
copper bridge and the iron bridge and the stone bridge and last of all
the wooden bridge, but still there was no donkey.
"He must have got all the way home," he thought.
When the Poor Man reached his native village things looked different.
Houses that he remembered had disappeared and others had taken their
places. He couldn't find his own little house at all. He asked the
people he met and they knew nothing about it. And they knew nothing
about him, either, not even his name. And nobody even knew about his
sons. At last he did meet one old man who remembered the family name and
who told him that many years before the last of the sons had gone to
another village to live.
"There's no place here for me," the Poor Man thought. "I better go back
to my friend the Beggar and stay with him. No one else wants me."
So once again he followed the silver tracks all that long way over all
those bridges and when at last he reached the garden gate he was very
tired, for he was old and feeble now. It was all he could do to give one
faint little knock. But the Beggar heard him and came running to let
him in. And when he saw him, how tired he was and how feeble, he put his
arm around him and helped him into the Garden and he said:
"You shall stay with me now forever and we shall be very happy
together."
And the Poor Man when he looked in the Beggar's face to thank him saw
that he was not a beggar at all but the Blessed Christ Himself. And then
he knew that he was in the Garden of Paradise.
[Illustration]
THE END
STORIES TO TELL
IT'S PERFECTLY TRUE AND OTHER STORIES. _By Hans Christian Andersen._
Twenty-eight stories translated from the Danish by Paul Leyssac.
13 DANISH TALES. _By Mary C. Hatch._ A baker's dozen of robust, humorous
folk tales.
MORE DANISH TALES. _By Mary C. Hatch._ Fifteen rollicking folk tales
retold from Sven Grundtvig's _Folkaeventyr_.
A BAKER'S DOZEN. _Selected by Mary Gould Davis._ Thirteen stories which
are especially successful in storytelling.
THE TREASURE OF LI-PO. _By Alice Ritchie._ Six original fairy tales set
in China and told with beauty and distinction.
THE SHEPHERD'S NOSEGAY: Stories from Finland and Czechoslovakia. _By
Parker Fillmore._ Children and storytellers alike will welcome these
rich and robust folk tales, long unavailable.
ROOTABAGA STORIES. _By Carl Sandburg._ An omnibus volume including all
the stories originally published in the two books _Rootabaga Stories_
and _Rootabaga Pigeons_.
THE TIGER'S WHISKER: And Other Tales and Legends from Asia and the
Pacific. _By Harold Courlander._ Thirty-one Far Eastern folk tales, full
of sly humor, adventure, and virtue rewarded.
THE HAT-SHAKING DANCE and Other Tales from the Gold Coast. _By Harold
Courlander and Albert Kofi Prempeh._ A handsome collection of twenty-one
wise and humorous Ashanti folk tales.
HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD, INC.
757 _Third Avenue, New York 17, N. Y._
_=The Magic Listening Cap=_
_More Folk Tales from Japan_
BY YOSHIKO UCHIDA
Wisdom and humor abound in the fourteen folk tales of this second
collection by the author of _The Dancing Kettle_. Once more Miss Uchida
has dipped into the wealth of Japanese folklore to retell delightful
stories that American children have seldom heard.
"The Wrestling Match of the Two Buddhas," "The Man Who Bought a Dream,"
"The Golden Axe," and others are a fascinating combination of the
strange and the familiar. A different land, a different people, a
different kind of magic all come to life in these colorful, imaginative
tales. And yet running through them are such universal folk themes as
the inevitable downfall of the greedy and the foolish. In all of these
adventures there is a keen sense of the Japanese countryside with its
mountains and sea, rice fields, deep green forests, and delicate
gardens.
Retold with freshness and simplicity, these ancient tales are not only
fun to read but also welcome new material for storytelling.
_Illustrated by the author_
Honor Book in the 1955 _N. Y. Herald Tribune_ Children's Spring Book
Festival
60-100
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Please hover your mouse over the words with a thin dotted gray line
underneath them for seeing what the original reads. The text in the solid
black box is the text from the dust cover flaps.
LIST OF FIXED ISSUES
p. 023--removed a duplicate period after 'frozen over'
p. 094--typo fixed: changed 'to to' into 'to'
p. 096--inserted a missing 'is' between 'It' and 'like a fox's tail!'
p. 131--typo fixed: changed 'hankerchief' into 'handkerchief'
p. 214--typo fixed: changed 'tomorrrow's' into 'tomorrow's'.
p. 225--removed a duplicate 'and' in front of 'searched here'
p. 238--typo fixed: changed 'winepresses' into 'wine-presses'
p. 281--typo fixed: changed 'horseshoes' into 'horse-shoes'