“Maybe I will have more luck than my brothers,” he said. “But what means of transportation should I choose? Is the balloon invented?” he asked his father, who knew about all the inventions that had been made or were ever going to be made; but he was told that no one had thought of a balloon yet; nor had steamships or railways been invented.
“I will take a balloon anyway,” he declared. “My father knows how to make one; and I will learn how to steer it as I fly. Everyone who sees me will think that he is seeing a mirage. As soon as I get to my destination I will burn the balloon; therefore, I’d better have a few of those future inventions called sulphur matches, too.”
He received all he had asked for, and away he flew. The birds followed him farther than they had his brothers; they wanted to see how that flight would end. Other birds joined them. They, too, were curious; they thought the balloon was a new kind of bird. He certainly had company. The air was black with birds; they looked like a cloud, a locust swarm from Egypt. Soon he was far out in the wide world.
“The east wind is certainly a true friend and a great help to me,” he said.
“You mean the east and the west,” said the winds. “If we both hadn’t helped you, you couldn’t have sailed northwest.”
He didn’t hear what the winds said; and it really doesn’t matter whether he did or not for our story. The birds got tired of following him. When the flock was largest, two of the birds had declared that too much was being made of the balloonist; he would get a swollen head from it.
“It is nothing to follow, after all it is only air, we find it degrading,” one said to the other.
They stayed behind; and so did all the other birds. “A balloon is nothing,” they all agreed.
Finally the balloon descended above a big city. The balloonist searched for the highest place in the town; it was a tall church spire. There he sat down so that he could observe what was going on; the balloon flew away, which was not according to plan. What happened to it I don’t know—and it doesn’t matter; after all, it hadn’t been invented yet.
He sat on the very top of the spire all alone; the birds were tired of him and he of them. Out of all of the city’s chimneys came smoke and smell.
“They are altars raised for your sake,” said the wind, who wanted to pay him a compliment.
The fourth brother looked down in the street below him and watched the passers-by: one was proud of his money; the next of his keys, though they opened nothing; a third of his clothes, though moths would eat them; a fourth of his body, though worms would eat that.
“Vanity! I think I will have to stir this soup a little and taste it,” he said. “But not right away; I will stay here for a while. The wind blows so nicely on my back; it is very enjoyable. I think I will stay as long as it comes from the same direction. I need a little peace in order to think. ‘It is best to sleep late in the morning if one has a hard day’s work ahead,’ say the lazy. Laziness is the root of all evil, but there is no evil in me or in my family. That’s what I say and the world agrees with me. I will stay as long as that wind blows, it is just to my taste.”
The fourth brother, the one who had developed taste, stayed right where he was. He was sitting on top of the weather vane, and when it turned, he turned with it, so the wind always blew on his back. We will leave him there, he can sit there forever and taste.
But the castle in the center of the Tree of the Sun seemed empty now that all the brothers had gone, one after the other.
“I am afraid that they have fared badly,” said their father. “They will never bring back the brilliant stone. It will never be found. They are gone! They are dead!” He bent over the Book of Truth and stared at the page on which he should have been able to read about the life after death, but he could see nothing.
His blind daughter was his only consolation, his only joy, and she loved him dearly. For his happiness’ sake she wished that the jewel would be found and brought home to the castle. She longed for her brothers, and thought sadly about where they could be and whether they were still alive. She wished fervently that she would dream about them; but even in her dreams she never saw them. Finally one night she dreamed that she heard their voices; they called to her from the wide world. She had had to follow them. She was far, far away and at the same time in her father’s house, as is possible in dreams. She did not meet her brothers, but she felt something in her hand. It burned like fire but did not pain her; it was the philosopher’s stone, the gem that her father desired so much, and she took it to him.
When she woke she thought that she still held the jewel in her hand, but it was a spindle from her spinning wheel. Through the night she had spun a thread finer than that which spiders make. It was so thin that the human eye could not see it, and yet because it had been moistened by her tears it was as strong as the anchor tow of a ship.
She rose from her bed. She felt that the dream had to be realized. It was still night and her father was sleeping. She kissed his hand and, taking the spindle, she fastened one end of the thread to her father’s house—for otherwise, being blind, she would not be able to find her way back—and set out into the wide world. She trusted that the thread would guide her home. From the Tree of the Sun she picked four leaves. These she would give to the wind that it might take one to each of her brothers as a greeting if she did not meet them.
How would she fare, this poor blind child? She had the invisible thread and she had one quality that her brothers had not had, which would serve her well: devotion. It gave her eyes on each of her fingers and made it possible for her to hear with her heart.
Out into the strange, turbulent world she walked; and wherever she went, the sun would shine so she could feel its warmth and a rainbow would span from the dark clouds to the clear blue sky. She heard the birds sing and smelled the orange groves and apple orchards so intensely that she could almost taste the fruits. She heard soft and lovely music, sweet songs of joy, but also discordant screams. It was a strange duet; the verses were at war with each other; it was humanity’s thoughts and judgments she was listening to.
“Life is a dungeon dark and deep,
A night in which we weep.”
Then another voice sang:
“Life is the rose on the vine
And every day the sun does shine.”
Then a more bitter voice was heard:
“Man’s life in self-interest is spent,
That truth is evident.”
But still another voice argued:
“Love’s river winds its way,
Changing November into May.”
Then a whining voice mocked,
“Everything is small and mean
And truth on lies will lean.”
A moment later another sang,
“Truth and goodness are strong.
Right always outlives wrong.”
Then many voices in a great chorus sang,
“Make fun of all, sneer and attack,
Bark with the dogs in the pack.”
This was not answered by the world but by a voice that came from the blind girl’s heart.
“Trust yourself and trust your God,
And let His will be done. Amen.”
Wherever the girl came, among young or old, women or men, her devotion brought forth truth, goodness, and beauty. She brought a ray of light—a ray of hope—into the artist’s workshop, the salons of the rich, and even into the dismal factories where great wheels clattered and turned. She was like the drop of dew that falls on a thirsting plant.
That was more than the Devil could allow. He has more brains than ten thousand men. He found a way to put a stop to it. He took the bubbles that form in the rotten waters of a swamp and caused the sevenfold echoes of lies to pass over them in order to make them stronger. Then he made a powder of false obituaries, verses of homage for which the poets had been paid, and sermons for which the preacher expected to be paid. This he dissolved and cooked in tears that envy had shed; at last he sprinkl
ed a little powder from a vain old maid’s cheek into it. Out of this brew he constructed a girl who in appearance and movement was a perfect copy of the blind girl, whom humanity had given the name “The Angel of Devotion.” The Devil had begun his game, for the world did not know which of the two girls was the true one. And how should humanity know? After all, they looked alike.
The poor blind girl repeated to herself the words she had sung before:
“Trust yourself and trust your God,
And let His will be done. Amen.”
Then she gave the four leaves that she had plucked from the Tree of the Sun to the winds that they might deliver them to her brothers. She felt certain that they would receive them, just as she had been sure that jewel that was more precious than all others would be found and brought to her father’s house.
“My father’s house.” The girl said the words out loud. “Yes, here on earth the gem is to be found, here is its hiding place. I am bringing back something more than my mere certainty of its existence: I feel within my closed hand the glow of the jewel. I can feel it pulse and swell. Every little grain of truth that the wind carried have I caught and kept. I have let them absorb the odor of beauty—and I took the sound of the human heart beating for the good, and added that. It is nothing but dust; but from these grains the jewel is formed. Look, my hand is filled with it!”
With the speed of thought she had returned to father’s house following the invisible thread. Now she held out her hand to him.
The evil one brewed a storm and whipped the Tree of the Sun; the doors to the castle sprang open and the wings of the wind rushed through the chambers.
“It will blow away!” shouted the father, and grabbed his daughter’s hand.
“No,” she shouted back at him. “It cannot be blown away, for I feel that its warmth and power have entered my soul.”
The shining dust was blown from her hand. Like a flame, it flew across the page of the Book of Truth on which one could read about the eternal life. The page was no longer blank. One word in illuminated letters was written there, one single word:
FAITH!
The four brothers had returned; they had felt a longing for their home when the leaves from the tree fell on their chests, and they had obeyed it. The birds, the deer, and antelope, yes, all the animals of the forest had come to join in their gladness. And why shouldn’t they, when they were allowed to?
As you have often seen when a single ray of light shines through a keyhole into a dark room, a shiny column of dust appears. Much more splendid than this—even more colorful than the rainbow—glittered and sparkled the word “FAITH” on the page, made as it was from grains of truth mixed with beauty and goodness. It shone more powerfully than the column of fire did that night when Moses and the people of Israel left for the Land of Canaan. From the word “FAITH” begins the bridge of hope that leads to the All-loving, to eternity.
81
How to Cook Soup upon a Sausage Pin
In all countries there are old sayings that everyone knows, even the school children, and it is hard to understand that the rest of the world does not know them too. Such a familiar expression in Danish is “to cook soup upon a sausage pin.” It means to make a lot out of nothing; gossips and journalists are experts at preparing this dish. But what is a sausage pin? It is a small wooden peg used for closing the sausage skin after the meat has been stuffed into it; you can imagine how strong a soup one could cook on that. Well, that was the introduction; it contained information and that is always useful. Now I can begin the story.
“It was a delightful dinner last night!” exclaimed an old female mouse to an acquaintance, who had not been invited to the party. “I was seated number twenty-one from the right of the old mouse king, and that is a respectable place. Shall I tell you what we ate? It was a very well-composed dinner. Moldy bread, pork crackling, tallow candles, and sausages; and everyone was served everything twice; it was as good as getting two meals. The atmosphere was most congenial, everyone spoke the most charming nonsense just as they would have at home. Everything was eaten; the only things left were the sausage pins. And that is the reason why we talked about them and the saying ‘to cook soup upon a sausage pin.’ Everybody had heard the expression but no one had ever tasted the soup or knew how it was made. We drank a toast to its inventor; he deserved to be made director of a poorhouse! Now wasn’t that witty? The old mouse king stood up and made a promise that he would marry the young mouse who could make the best-tasting soup cooked upon a sausage pin. She would become his queen; and he gave the female mice a year and a day to find out how it was done.”
“That is fair enough!” said the second mouse. “But tell me, how do you make it?”
“Yes, how does one cook soup upon a sausage pin? That is what everybody asked, both the young and the old. They all wanted to be queen; but no one knew how and few wanted to trouble themselves by going out into the wide world to find out, and that seemed necessary. It is not so easy to leave one’s family—the old familiar nooks and corners where one might stumble over a cheese rind or smell pork crackling—to go out in the world and risk starvation—or an even worse fate: to be eaten alive by a cat!”
It was probably thoughts like these that kept most of the young female mice from leaving their homes in order to find the recipe. But four young and very poor mice declared that they would try their luck; they would each go to one of the corners of the world and see whom fortune smiled upon. They were each given a sausage pin so that they wouldn’t forget why they were traveling; they could use them as walking canes.
It was in the beginning of May when they left; and a year later on the first of May they were back. But only three of them; the fourth one did not arrive, though the day of trial and decision had come!
“Why must there always be sadness mixed with joy?” said the mouse king, while he sent out invitations to all the mice within miles. They were to meet in the royal kitchen, for that was the most appropriate place to hold the contest. The three mice who had been out traveling were lined up in a row; where the fourth should have stood was placed a sausage pin with black crepe around it. No one dared say anything before the three mice had spoken and the king had given his judgment. Now we shall hear what happened!
WHAT THE FIRST LITTLE MOUSE HAD HEARD AND LEARNED ON HER JOURNEY:
“When I started on my journey out into the wide world,” began the little mouse, “I thought, as most young mice do, that I knew just about everything there is to know; but in that I was mistaken; it takes years and days to grow wise. I found a ship that was sailing north and sailed on it, for I had heard that a cook on board a boat has to learn to make much out of nothing. But the pantry was filled with bacon and barrels full of salt pork. We lived well; and it was no place to learn how to cook soup upon a sausage pin. We sailed many days and nights. The ship rolled and tossed, and the place was too damp for my taste. When we arrived at our destination I disembarked; that was far up north!
“It is strange to come from one’s own nook, sail on a ship that is also a kind of nook, and then come out into the wide world. The ship had become a little like home; and once I left it I realized that I was more than a hundred miles away in a foreign country! Great forests stretched farther than the eye could see, all of them were pine and birch; they smelled so fresh and strong, I found it very unpleasant. The wild flowers had such a spicy odor that they made me sneeze. I was thinking of sausages all the time. The water in the lakes looked clear enough at the shore, but when you looked at them from a distance they were black as ink. There was something white floating on the surface; at first I thought it was foam, but I found out that it was swans. I saw them fly and walk, too. When you have seen a swan walk, then you know that it is a cousin of a goose: it waddles; there is no way of hiding the family that one belongs to. I stayed with my own kind, the field mice; they were, however, ignorant of finer culinary art, and that, after all, was the purpose of my journey. That it was possible to cook soup upon a
sausage pin was to them such an absurd idea that soon the whole forest knew about it. They all deemed it impossible; and at that moment I would never have guessed that that very night I was to learn how it is done.
“It was midsummer, that was why the forest smelled so strong and the flowers so spicy, and the lakes where the swans swam looked so black. At the edge of the forest near a little cluster of houses, a pole as tall as the mast of a ship had been raised. On its very top hung a wreath and colored ribbons: it was a maypole. Young people were dancing around it and singing, while the violins played. Oh, it was a gay sight, as the sun set; and later on, too, as the moon rose, but I didn’t join them; after all, a little mouse does not belong at a dance. I sat in the soft moss and held onto my sausage pin.
“The moonlight fell especially on a spot beneath a big tree where the moss was particularly soft and delicate—if I dared I would say that it was as exquisite as the mouse king’s fur! It was green and healthy for the eyes to look at. Suddenly a band of little creatures came; they were so small that they only reached my knees. They looked like human beings, but their proportions made them far lovelier. The called themselves elves. Their clothes were made from the petals of flowers, embroidered with the wings of flies and mosquitoes, which looked very fetching indeed. They appeared to be looking for something; I couldn’t make out what it was.