King.
"You have done wonders, my little man," said the King. "But the well
must be dug or I shall take off your ears."
"Kindly tell me where you would like to have the well," said Jack,
bowing again.
A place in the courtyard was pointed out. The King sat in his great
chair on a balcony above, and by him sat his beautiful daughter, the
Princess. They wanted to see the little fellow dig.
Jack took the pickaxe from his other pocket. He set it down on the
spot that had been pointed out.
"Now, Mr Pickaxe, dig! dig!" he cried.
You should have seen how the rocks flew.
In fifteen minutes a well a hundred feet deep was dug.
"What do you think of that?" asked Jack.
"It is a fine well," said the King, "but it has no water in it."
Jack felt in his cap for his walnut shell. He took it out and dropped
it softly to the bottom of the well. As he did so he shouted, "Now, Mr
Spring, spout! spout!"
The water spouted out of the walnut shell in a great stream. It filled
the well. It ran over into the King's garden.
All the people shouted, and the Princess clapped her hands.
With his cap in his hands Jack went and kneeled down before the King.
"Sire," he said, "do you think that I have won the prize?"
"Most certainly I do," answered the King; and he bade his servants
bring the three bags of gold and pour the coins out at Jack's feet.
"But, father," said the Princess, "have you forgotten the other part
of the prize?" and she blushed very red.
"Oh no," said the King; "but you both are very young. When you are a
few years older, we shall have a pretty wedding in the palace. Are you
willing to wait, young man?"
"I am willing to obey you in everything," answered Jack; "but I wonder
if I might not ask you for one other little favour?"
"Say on; and be careful not to ask too much," answered the King.
"May it please you, then," said Jack, "to pardon my two brothers?"
The King nodded, and in a short time Peter and Paul were brought
around into the courtyard.
"Well, brothers," said Jack kindly, "I wonder if I was very foolish
when I wanted to know all about things."
"You have certainly been lucky," said Paul; "and I am glad of it."
"You have saved our ears," said Peter, "and we are all lucky."
_The Feast of Lanterns_[10]
_Wang Chih watches a Game of Chess_
Wang Chih was only a poor man, but he had a wife and children to love,
and they made him so happy that he would not have changed places with
the Emperor himself.
[Footnote 10: The story of a Chinese Rip Van Winkle. From Stead's
_Books for the Bairns_, No. 52, _Fairy Tales from China_. By
permission.]
He worked in the fields all day, and at night his wife always had a
bowl of rice ready for his supper. And sometimes, for a treat, she
made him some bean soup, or gave him a little dish of fried pork.
But they could not afford pork very often; he generally had to be
content with rice.
One morning, as he was setting off to his work, his wife sent Han
Chung, his son, running after him to ask him to bring home some
firewood.
"I shall have to go up into the mountain for it at noon," he said. "Go
and bring me my axe, Han Chung."
Han Chung ran for his father's axe, and Ho-Seen-Ko, his little sister,
came out of the cottage with him.
"Remember it is the Feast of Lanterns to-night, father," she said.
"Don't fall asleep up on the mountain; we want you to come back and
light them for us."
She had a lantern in the shape of a fish, painted red and black and
yellow, and Han Chung had got a big round one, all bright crimson, to
carry in the procession; and, besides that, there were two large
lanterns to be hung outside the cottage door as soon as it grew dark.
Wang Chih was not likely to forget the Feast of Lanterns, for the
children had talked of nothing else for a month, and he promised to
come home as early as he could.
At noontide, when his fellow-labourers gave up working, and sat down
to rest and eat, Wang Chih took his axe and went up the mountain slope
to find a small tree that he might cut down for fuel.
He walked a long way, and at last saw one growing at the mouth of a
cave.
"This will be just the thing," he said to himself. But, before
striking the first blow, he peeped into the cave to see if it were
empty.
To his surprise, two old men, with long, white beards, were sitting
inside playing chess, as quietly as mice, with their eyes fixed on
the chessboard.
Wang Chih knew something of chess, and he stepped in and watched them
for a few minutes.
"As soon as they look up, I can ask them if I may chop down a tree,"
he said to himself. But they did not look up, and by-and-by Wang Chih
got so interested in the game that he put down his axe and sat on the
floor to watch it better.
The two old men sat cross-legged on the ground, and the chessboard
rested on a slab, like a stone table, between them.
On one corner of the slab lay a heap of small, brown objects which
Wang Chih took at first to be date stones; but after a time the
chess-players ate one each, and put one in Wang Chih's mouth; and he
found it was not a date stone at all.
It was a delicious kind of sweetmeat, the like of which he had never
tasted before; and the strangest thing about it was that it took his
hunger and thirst away.
He had been both hungry and thirsty when he came into the cave, as he
had not waited to have his midday meal with the other field workers;
but now he felt quite comforted and refreshed.
He sat there some time longer, and noticed, as the old men frowned
over the chessboard, their beards grew longer and longer, until they
swept the floor of the cave, and even found their way out of the door.
"I hope my beard will never grow as quickly," said Wang Chih, as he
rose and took up his axe again.
Then one of the old men spoke, for the first time. "Our beards have
not grown quickly, young man. How long is it since you came here?"
"About half-an-hour, I daresay," replied Wang Chih. But as he spoke,
the axe crumbled to dust beneath his fingers, and the second
chess-player laughed, and pointed to the little brown sweetmeats on
the table.
"Half-an-hour, or half-a-century--ay, half a thousand years--are alike
to him who tastes of these. Go down into your village and see what has
happened since you left it."
_The Sad Consequences_
So Wang Chih went down as quickly as he could from the mountain, and
found the fields where he had worked covered with houses, and a busy
town where his own little village had been. In vain he looked for his
house, his wife, and his children.
There were strange faces everywhere; and although when evening came
the Feast of Lanterns was being held once more, there was no
Ho-Seen-Ko carrying her red and yellow fish, or Han Chung with his
flaming red ball.
At last he found a woman, a very, very old woman, who told him that
when she was a tiny girl she remembered her grandmother saying how,
when _she_ was a tiny girl, a poor young man had been spirited away by
the Genii of the mountains, on the day of the Feast of Lanterns,
leaving his wife and little children with only a few handfuls of rice
in the house.
"Moreover, if you wait while the procession passes, you will see two
children dressed to represent Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko, and their
mother, carrying the empty rice bowl, between them; for this is done
every year to remind people to take care of the widow and fatherless,"
she said.
So Wang Chih waited in the street; and in a little while the
procession came to an end; and the last three figures in it were a boy
and girl, dressed like his own two children, walking on either side of
a young woman carrying a rice bowl. But she was not like his wife in
anything but her dress, and the children were not at all like Han
Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko; and poor Wang Chih's heart was very heavy as he
walked away out of the town.
He slept out on the mountain, and early in the morning found his way
back to the cave where the two old men were playing chess.
At first they said they could do nothing for him, and told him to go
away and not disturb them; but Wang Chih would not go, and they soon
found the only way to get rid of him was to give him some really good
advice.
"You must go to the White Hare of the Moon, and ask him for a bottle
of the elixir of life. If you drink that you will live for ever," said
one of them.
"But I don't want to live for ever," objected Wang Chih; "I wish to go
back and live in the days when my wife and children were here."
"Ah, well! For that you must mix the elixir of life with some water
out of the Sky-Dragon's mouth."
"And where is the Sky-Dragon to be found?" inquired Wang Chih.
"In the sky, of course. You really ask very stupid questions. He lives
in a cloud-cave. And when he comes out of it he breathes fire, and
sometimes water. If he is breathing fire, you will be burnt up, but if
it is only water, you will easily be able to catch some in a bottle.
What else do you want?"
For Wang Chih still lingered at the mouth of the cave.
"I want a pair of wings to fly with, and a bottle to catch the water
in," he replied boldly.
So they gave him a little bottle; and before he had time to say,
"Thank you!" a White Crane came sailing past, and lighted on the
ground close to the cave.
"The Crane will take you wherever you like," said the old men. "Go
now, and leave us in peace."
_Wang Chih visits the Fire Dragon_
Wang Chih sat on the White Crane's back, and was taken up, and up, and
up through the sky to the cloud-cave where the Sky-Dragon lived. And
the Dragon had the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a
rabbit, the ears of a cow, and the claws of a hawk.
Besides this, he had whiskers and a beard, and in his beard was a
bright pearl.
All these things show that he was a real, genuine dragon, and if you
ever meet a dragon who is not exactly like this, you will know he is
only a make-believe one.
Wang Chih felt rather frightened when he perceived the cave in the
distance, and if it had not been for the thought of seeing his wife
again, and his little boy and girl, he would have been glad to turn
back.
While he was far away, the cloud-cave looked like a dark hole in the
midst of a soft, white, woolly mass, such as one sees in the sky on an
April day; but as he came nearer he found the cloud was as hard as a
rock, and covered with a kind of dry, white grass.
When he got there, he sat down on a tuft of grass near the cave, and
considered what he should do next.
The first thing was, of course, to bring the Dragon out, and the next
to make him breathe water instead of fire.
"I have it!" cried Wang Chih at last; and he nodded his head so many
times that the White Crane expected to see it fall off.
He struck a light, and set the grass on fire, and it was so dry that
the flames spread all around the entrance to the cave, and made such a
smoke and crackling that the Sky-Dragon put his head out to see what
was the matter.
"Ho! ho!" cried the Dragon, when he saw what Wang Chih had done, "I
can soon put this to rights." And he breathed once, and the water came
from his nose and mouth in three streams.
But this was not enough to put the fire out. Then he breathed twice,
and the water came out in three mighty rivers, and Wang Chih, who had
taken care to fill his bottle when the first stream began to flow,
sailed away on the White Crane's back as fast as he could, to escape
being drowned.
The rivers poured over the cloud-rock, until there was not a spark
left alight, and rushed down through the sky into the sea below.
Fortunately, the sea lay right underneath the Dragon's cave, or he
would have done great mischief. As it was, the people on the coast
looked out across the water toward Japan, and saw three inky-black
clouds stretching from the sky into the sea.
"My word! There is a fine rain-storm out at sea!" they said to each
other.
But of course it was nothing of the kind; it was only the Sky-Dragon
putting out the fire Wang Chih had kindled.
_Wang Chih visits the White Hare of the Moon_
Meanwhile, Wang Chih was on his way to the Moon, and when he got there
he went straight to the hut where the Hare of the Moon lived, and
knocked at the door.
The Hare was busy pounding the drugs which make up the elixir of life;
but he left his work, and opened the door, and invited Wang Chih to
come in.
He was not ugly, like the Dragon; his fur was quite white and soft and
glossy, and he had lovely, gentle brown eyes.
The Hare of the Moon lives a thousand years, as you know, and when he
is five hundred years old he changes his colour, from brown to white,
and becomes, if possible, better tempered and nicer than he was
before.
As soon as he heard what Wang Chih wanted, he opened two windows at
the back of the hut, and told him to look through each of them in
turn.
"Tell me what you see," said the Hare, going back to the table where
he was pounding the drugs.
"I can see a great many houses and people," said Wang Chih, "and
streets--why, this is the town I was in yesterday, the one which has
taken the place of my old village."
Wang Chih stared, and grew more and more puzzled. Here he was up in
the Moon, and yet he could have thrown a stone into the busy street of
the Chinese town below his window.
"How does it come here?" he stammered, at last.
"Oh, that is my secret," replied the wise old Hare. "I know how to do
a great many things which would surprise you. But the question is, do
you want to go back there?"
Wang Chih shook his head.
"Then close the window. It is the window of the Present. And look
through the other, which is the window of the Past."
Wang Chih obeyed, and through this window he saw his own dear little
village, and his wife, and Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko jumping about her
as she hung up the coloured lanterns outside the door.
"Father won't be in time to light them for us, after all," Han Chung
was saying.
Wang Chih turned, and looked eagerly at the White Hare.
"Let me go to them," he said. "I have got a bottle of water from the
Sky-Dragon's mouth, and----"
"That's all right," said the White Hare. "Give it to me."
He opened the bottle, and mixed the contents carefully with a few
drops of the elixir of life, which was clear as crystal, and of which
each drop shone like a diamond as he poured it in.
"Now, drink this," he said to Wang Chih, "and it will give you the
power of living once more in the Past, as you desire."
Wang Chih held out his hand, and drank every drop.
The moment he had done so, the window grew larger, and he saw some
steps leading from it down into the village street.
Thanking the Hare, he rushed through it, and ran toward his own house,
arriving in time to take from his wife's hand the taper with which she
was about to light the red and yellow lanterns which swung over the
door.
"What has kept you so long, father? Where have you been?" asked Han
Chung, while little Ho-Seen-Ko wondered why he kissed and embraced
them all so eagerly.
But Wang Chih did not tell them his adventures just then; only when
darkness fell, and the Feast of Lanterns began, he took part in it
with a merry heart.
_Prince Harweda and the Magic Prison_
By ELIZABETH HARRISON
(_Adapted_)
Little Harweda was born a prince. His father was king over all the
land, and his mother was the most beautiful queen the world had ever
seen, and Prince Harweda was their only child. From the day of his
birth, everything that love or money could do for him had been done.
The pillow on which his head rested was made out of the down from
humming-birds' breasts. The water in which his hands and face were
washed was always steeped in rose leaves before being brought to the
nursery. Everything that could be done was done, and nothing which
could add to his ease or comfort was left undone.
But his parents, although they were king and queen, were not very
wise, for they never thought of making the young prince think of
anyone but himself. Never in all his life had he given up one of his
comforts that someone else might have a pleasure. So, of course, he
grew to be selfish and peevish, and by the time he was five years old
he was so disagreeable that nobody loved him. "Dear! dear! what shall
we do?" said the poor queen, and the king only sighed and answered,
"Ah, what indeed!" They were both very much grieved, for they well
knew that little Harweda would never grow up to be really a great king
unless he could make his people love him.
At last they determined to send for his fairy godmother to see if she
could cure Prince Harweda of always thinking about himself. "Well,
well, well!" exclaimed his godmother when they laid the case before
her, "this is a pretty state of affairs! And I his godmother, too! Why
wasn't I called in sooner?" She told them she would have to think a
day and a night and a day again before she could offer them any help.
"But," added she, "if I take the child in charge, you must let me have
my way for a whole year." The king and queen gladly promised that they
would not even speak to or see their son for the year if the fairy
godmother would only cure him of his selfishness. "We'll see about
that," said the godmother. "Humph, expecting to be a king some day and
not caring for anybody but himself--a fine king he'll make!" With that
she flew off, and the king and queen saw nothing more of her for a
day and a night and another day. Then back she came in a great hurry.
"Give me the prince," said she, "I have a house all ready for him. One
month from to-day I'll bring him back to you. Perhaps he'll be cured
and perhaps he won't. If he is not cured then, we shall try two months
next time. We'll see, we'll see." Without any more ado she picked up
the astonished young prince and flew away with him as lightly as if he
were nothing but a feather or a straw. In vain the poor queen wept and
begged for a last kiss. Before she had wiped her eyes, the fairy
godmother and Prince Harweda were out of sight.
They flew a long distance, until they reached a great forest. When
they had come to the middle of it, down flew the fairy, and in a
minute more the young prince was standing on the green grass beside a
beautiful pink marble palace that looked something like a good-sized
summer-house.
"This is your home," said the godmother. "In it you will find
everything you need, and you can do just as you choose with your
time." Little Harweda was delighted at this, for there was nothing in
the world he liked better than to do as he pleased. He tossed his cap
up into the air and ran into the lovely little house without so much
as saying "Thank you" to his godmother. "Humph," said she, as he
disappeared, "you'll have enough of it before you have finished, my
fine prince." With that, off she flew. Prince Harweda had no sooner
set his foot inside the small rose-coloured palace than the iron door
shut with a bang and locked itself. This was because it was an
enchanted house, as of course all houses are that are built by
fairies.
Prince Harweda did not mind being locked in, as he cared very little
for the great beautiful outside world. The new home was very fine, and
he was eager to examine it. Then, too, he thought that when he was
tired of it, all he would have to do would be to kick on the door and
a servant from somewhere would come and open it--he had always had a
servant to obey his slightest command.
His fairy godmother had told him that it was _his_ house, therefore he
was interested in looking at everything in it.
The floor was made of a beautiful red copper that shone in the
sunlight like burnished gold and seemed almost a dark red in the
shadow. He had never seen anything half so fine before. The ceiling
was of mother-of-pearl, with tints of red and blue and yellow and
green, all blending into gleaming white, as only mother-of-pearl can.
From the middle of this handsome ceiling hung a large gilded bird-cage
containing a beautiful bird, which just at this moment was singing a
glad song of welcome to the prince. Harweda, however, cared very
little about birds, so he took no notice of the singer.
Around on every side were couches with richly embroidered coverings
and soft down pillows. "Ah," thought the prince, "here I can lounge at
my ease with no one to call me to stupid lessons!" Wonderfully carved
jars and vases of gold and silver stood about on the floor, and each
was filled with a different perfume. "This is delicious," said Prince
Harweda. "Now I can have all the sweet odours I want without the
trouble of going into the garden for roses or lilies."
In the centre of the room was a fountain of sparkling water which
leaped up and fell back into its marble basin with a faint, dreamy
music very pleasant to hear.
On a table near at hand were various baskets of the most tempting
pears and grapes and peaches, and near them were dishes of sweetmeats.
"Good," said the greedy young prince, "that is what I like best of
all." Thereupon he fell to eating the fruit and sweetmeats as fast as
he could cram them into his mouth. He ate so much that he had a pain
in his stomach, but strange to say, the table was just as full as
when he began, for no sooner did he reach his hand out and take a
soft, mellow pear or a rich, juicy peach than another pear or peach
took its place in the basket. The same thing happened when he helped
himself to chocolate drops or marsh-mallows, for of course, as the
little palace was enchanted, everything in it was enchanted also.
When Prince Harweda had eaten until he could eat no more, he threw
himself down upon one of the couches and fell asleep. When he awoke,
he noticed, for the first time, the walls which, by the way, were
really the strangest part of his new home. They had in them twelve
long, chequered windows which reached from the ceiling to the floor.
The spaces between the windows were filled with mirrors exactly the
same size as the windows, so that the whole room was walled in with
windows and looking-glasses. Through the three windows that looked to
the north could be seen far distant mountains, towering high above the
surrounding country. From the three windows that faced the south could
be seen the great ocean, tossing and moving and gleaming with white
and silver. The eastern windows gave each morning a glorious view of
the sunrise. The windows on the west looked out upon a great forest of
tall fir-trees, and at the time of sunset most splendid colours could
be seen between the dark, green branches.
But little Harweda cared for none of these beautiful views. In fact he
scarcely glanced out of the windows at all, he was so taken up with
the broad handsome mirrors. In each of them he could see himself
reflected, and he was very fond of looking at himself in a
looking-glass. He was much pleased when he noticed that the mirrors
were so arranged that each one not only reflected his whole body,
head, arms, feet, and all, but that it also reflected his image as
seen in several of the other mirrors. He could thus see his front, and
back, and each side, all at the same time. As he was a handsome boy,
he enjoyed these many views of himself immensely, and would stand and
sit and lie down just for the fun of seeing the many images of himself
do the same thing.
He spent so much time looking at and admiring himself in the wonderful
looking-glasses that he had very little time for the books and games
in the palace. Hours were spent each day first before one mirror and
then another, and he did not notice that the windows were growing
narrower and narrower and the mirrors wider, until the former had
become so small that they hardly admitted light enough for him to see
himself in the looking-glass. Still, this did not alarm him very much,
as he cared nothing for the outside world. It only made him spend more
time at the mirror, as it was now getting quite difficult for him to
see himself at all. The windows at last became mere slits in the wall,
and the mirrors grew so large that they not only reflected little
Harweda but all of the room besides in a dim kind of way.