THE KING AND THE SHIRT
A king once fell ill.
"I will give half my kingdom to the man who can cure me," he said.
All his wise men gathered together to decide how the king could be cured. But no one knew. Only one of the wise men said what he thought would cure the king.
"If you can find a happy man, take his shirt, put it on the king--and the king will be cured."
The king sent his emissaries to search for a happy man. they traveled far and wide throughout his whole kingdom, but they could not find a happy man. There was no one who was completely satisfied: if a man was rich he was ailing; if he was healthy he was poor; if he was rich and healthy he had a bad wife; or if he had children they were bad--everyone had something to complain of.
Finally late one night, the king's son was passing by a poor little hut and he heard someone say:
"Now, God be praised, I have finished my work, I have eaten my fill, and I can lie down and sleep! What more could I want?"
The king's son rejoiced and gave orders that the man's shirt be taken and carried to the king, and that the man be given as much money as he wanted.
The emissaries went in to take off the man's shirt, but the happy man was so poor that he had no shirt.
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer who enjoyed fame and prosperity during his life. His best known novels were War and Peace and Anna Karenina. In 1888, at the age of
60, he renounced his wealth, give his money away to his family (he had 13 children) and earned his living as a farmer and shoemaker.
In 1888 until his death in 1910, he wrote his Fables. I found this little gem in Dean's bookcase.
2 comments:
That's lovely. Could you tell me what book it's from?
Good story. Rich under-meanings.
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