The emperor’s horse had been awarded golden shoes, one for each hoof. It was such a beautiful animal, with strong legs and a mane that fell like a veil of silk over its neck. Its eyes were sad, and when you looked into them you felt certain that if the horse could speak it would be able to answer more questions than you could ask. On the battlefield it had carried its master through a rain of bullets and a cloud of gun smoke. It was a true war horse, and once when the emperor was surrounded by the enemy, it had bit and kicked their horses and then, when all seemed lost, it had leaped over the carcass of an enemy steed to carry the emperor to safety. The horse had saved his master’s golden crown and his life, which was worth a great deal more to the emperor than all the crown jewels. And that was why the blacksmith had been given orders to fasten a golden shoe on each of its hoofs.
The dung beetle climbed to the top of the manure pile to watch. “First the big and then the small,” he said. “Not that size is important,” he added as he lifted one of his thin legs and stretched it up toward the blacksmith.
“What do you want?” the man asked.
“Golden shoes,” replied the dung beetle while balancing on five legs.
“You must be out of your mind to think that you should have golden shoes,” the blacksmith exclaimed, and scratched himself behind his right ear.
“Golden shoes!” repeated the dung beetle crossly. “Am I not as good as that big clumsy beast that needs to have a servant to groom it, and even to see to it that it doesn’t starve? Do I not belong to the emperor’s stable too?”
“But why does the horse deserve golden shoes, have you any idea about that?”
“Idea!” cried the dung beetle. “I have a very good idea of how I deserve to be treated and how I am treated. Now I have been insulted enough; there is nothing left for me to do but go out into the wide world.”
“Good riddance,” said the smith.
“Brute!” returned the dung beetle, but the blacksmith, who had already returned to his work, did not hear him.
The dung beetle flew from the stable to the flower garden; it was a lovely place that smelled of roses and lavender.
“Isn’t it beautiful here?” a ladybug called to him. She had just come for a visit and was busy folding her fragile wings beneath her black-spotted armor. “The flowers smell so sweet that I think I shall stay here forever.”
The dung beetle sniffed. “I am used to something better. Why, there isn’t even a decent pile of dung here.”
The dung beetle sat down to rest in the shadow of a tiger lily. Climbing up the flower’s stem was a caterpillar. “The world is beautiful,” the caterpillar said. “The sun is very warm and I am getting quite sleepy. When I fall asleep—or die as some call it—I am sure that I shall wake up as a butterfly.”
“Butterfly, indeed! Don’t give yourself airs. I come from the emperor’s stable, and no one there—not even the emperor’s horse—has any notions like that. Those who can fly, fly.… And those who can crawl, crawl.” And then the dung beetle flew away.
“I try not to let things annoy me; but they annoy me anyway,” the dung beetle thought as it landed with a thud in the middle of a great lawn, where it lay quietly for a moment before falling asleep.
Goodness, it was raining. It poured! The dung beetle woke with a splash and tried to dig himself down into the earth but he couldn’t. The rain had formed little rivers, and the dung beetle swam first on his stomach and then on his back. There was no hope of being able to fly. “I shan’t live through it,” he muttered, and sighed so deeply that his mouth filled with water. There was nothing to do but lie still where he was, and so he lay still.
When the rain let up for a moment the dung beetle blinked the water out of his eyes and looked about. He saw something white and crawled through the wet grass toward it. It was a piece of linen that had been stretched out on the grass to bleach. “I am used to better but it will have to do,” he thought. “Though it’s neither as warm nor as comfortable as a heap of dung; but when you travel you have to take things as they come.”
And he stayed under the linen a whole day and a whole night; and it rained all the time. Finally, the following morning, the dung beetle stuck his head out from the fold of the linen and, seeing the gray sky, he was very annoyed.
Two frogs sat down on the linen. “What glorious weather,” said one to the other. “It’s so refreshing and this linen is soaking wet; to sit here is almost as pleasant as to swim.”
“I would like to know,” began the other frog, “if the swallow, who travels a good deal in foreign countries, ever has been in a land that has a better climate than ours. As much rain as you need; and a bit of wind, too—not to talk of the mist and the dew. Why, it is as good as living in a ditch. If you don’t love this climate, then you don’t love your country.”
“Have you ever been in the emperor’s stable?” the dung beetle asked. “There the wetness is spicy and warm. I prefer that kind of climate because I am used to it; but when you travel you can’t take it along, that’s the way things are.… Could you tell me if there is a hothouse in this garden, where a person of my rank and sensitivity would feel at home?”
The frogs either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand him.
“I never ask a question more than once,” said the dung beetle after he had repeated his query the third time without getting an answer.
He walked along until he came upon a piece of a broken flowerpot. It shouldn’t have been lying there but the gardener hadn’t seen it, so it provided a good home for several families of earwigs. Earwigs do not need very much room, only company, especially lady earwigs, who are very motherly. Underneath the piece of pottery there lived several lady earwigs; and each of them thought that her children were the handsomest and most intelligent in the whole world.
“My son is engaged,” one of them announced. “That innocent joy of my life … His most cherished ambition is to climb into the ear of a minister. He is charmingly childish, and being engaged will keep him from running about, and that is a great comfort to a mother.”
“Our son,” began another mother earwig, “came straight out of the egg. He is full of life and that is a joy. He is busy sowing his wild oats, and that, too, can make a mother proud. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Dung Beetle?” She had recognized him by his shape.
“You are both right,” remarked the dung beetle; and the earwigs invited him to come into their home and make himself comfortable.
“Now you must meet my children,” said a third mother earwig.
“And mine!” cried a fourth. “They are so lovable and so amusing, and they only misbehave when they have stomach aches and it’s not their fault that you get one so easily at their age.”
All the mothers talked and their children talked; and when the little ones weren’t talking, they were pulling at the dung beetle’s mustache with the little tweezers that each of them had in his tail.
“Always up to something! Aren’t they darling?” the mothers said in a chorus, and oozed mother love. But the dung beetle was bored and asked for directions to the nearest hothouse.
“It is far, far away, nearly at the end of the world, on the other side of the ditch,” explained one of the lady earwigs. “If one of my children ever should think of traveling so far away I would die. I am sure of it.”
“Well, that is where I am going,” said the dung beetle, and to show that he was really gallant, he left without saying good-by.
In the ditch he met many relatives: all of them dung beetles. “This is our home,” they said. “It is quite comfortable: warm and wet. Please step down into the land of plenty. You must be tired after all your travels.”
“I am!” replied the dung beetle. “I have lain a whole day and a whole night on linen. Cleanliness wears you out so. Then I stood under a drafty flowerpot until I got arthritis in my wings. It is a blessing to be with my own kind again.”
“Do you come from the hothouse?” one of the older dung beetles asked.
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“Higher still. I was born in the emperor’s stable with golden shoes on. I am traveling incognito on a secret mission. And no matter how much you coaxed, I wouldn’t tell you about it.” With these words the dung beetle crept into the mud and made himself comfortable.
Nearby sat three young lady dung beetles. They were tittering because they didn’t know what to say.
“They are not engaged, though they are beautiful,” remarked their mother. The young ladies tittered again, this time because they were shy.
“Even in the emperor’s stable I have never seen anyone more beautiful,” agreed the dung beetle, who had traveled far and wide.
“They are young and virtuous. Don’t ruin them! Don’t speak to them unless you have honorable intentions. But I see you are a gentleman, and therefore I give you my blessings!”
“Hurrah!” cried all the other dung beetles, and congratulated the foreigner on his engagement. First engaged, then married; there was no reason to put it off.
The first day of married life was good, and the second was pleasant enough, but on the third began all the responsibilities of providing food for his wives, and soon there would probably be offspring.
“They took me by surprise,” thought the dung beetle. “Now I shall surprise them.”
And so he did. He ran away. All day the wives waited, and all night too; then they declared themselves widows. The other dung beetles were angry and called him a ne’er-do-well, because they feared that now they would have to support the deserted wives.
“Just behave as if you were virgins again,” said their mother. “Come, you are still my innocent girls. But shame on the tramp who abandoned you.”
In the meantime, the dung beetle was sailing across the ditch on a cabbage leaf. It was morning and two human beings who happened to be passing noticed him and picked him up. They turned the dung beetle over and looked at him from all sides, for these two men were scholars.
The younger of the two, who was the most learned, said, “ ‘Allah sees the black scarab in the black stone that is part of the black mountain.’ Isn’t it written thus in the Koran?” Then he translated the dung beetle’s name into Latin and gave a lecture in which he explained its genealogy and history. The older scholar remarked that there was no reason to take the dung beetle home with them, because he already had a much more beautiful scarab in his collection.
The dung beetle’s feelings were hurt and he flew right out of the scholar’s hand, high up into the sky. Now that his wings were dry he was able to make the long journey to the hothouse in one stretch. Luckily, a window was open and he flew straight in and landed on a pile of manure that had been delivered that morning.
“This is sumptuous,” he said as he dug himself down into the dung, where he soon was asleep. He dreamed that the emperor’s horse was dead and that he—the dung beetle—had not only been given its four golden shoes but had been promised two more. It was a pleasant dream and when the dung beetle awoke he climbed out of the manure to look about him. How magnificent everything was!
There were slender palm trees, whose green leaves appeared transparent when the sun shone on them; and below the trees were flowers of all colors. Some were red as fire, and some were yellow as amber, and some were as pure white as new-fallen show. “What a marvelous display!” exclaimed the dung bettle. “And think how delicious it all will taste as soon as it is rotten. It is a glorious larder. I must go visiting and see if I can find any of my family living here. I cannot associate with just anybody. I have my pride, and that I am proud of.” Then he crawled on, recalling as he did so, his dream and how the horse had died and he was given its gold shoes.
Suddenly a little hand picked him up, and again he was pinched and turned over. The gardener’s son and one of his playmates had been exploring in the hothouse and, when they saw the dung beetle, they decided it would be fun to keep it. They wrapped it in a leaf from a grapevine, and the gardener’s son stuck it in his pocket.
The dung beetle tried to creep and to crawl, and the boy closed his hand around him and that was most uncomfortable.
The boys ran to the big pond at the other end of the garden. A worn-out wooden shoe with a missing instep became a ship. With a stick for a mast and the dung beetle, who was tied to the stick with a piece of woolen thread, as the captain, the ship was launched.
The pool was large and the dung beetle thought he was adrift on an ocean. He got so frightened that he fell over on his back and there he lay with all his legs pointing up toward the sky.
There were currents in the water and they carried the wooden shoe along. When it got out too far, one of the boys would roll up his trousers—both boys were barefooted—and wade out to bring the shoe nearer the shore. Suddenly, while the shoe was quite far out, almost in the center of the pond, someone called the boys, called them in so stern a voice that they forgot all about the shoe and ran home as fast as they could. The wooden shoe drifted on and on. The dung beetle shuddered with fear, for he couldn’t fly away, tethered as he was to the mast.
A fly came to keep him company. “Lovely weather, don’t you agree? I think I’ll rest here for a moment in the sun. A very comfortable place you have here.”
“Nonsense!” cried the dung beetle. “How can I be comfortable when I am tied to the mast? You talk like an idiot, so I’m sure you must be one.”
“I’m not tied to anything,” said the fly, and flew away.
“Now I know the world,” muttered the dung beetle. “It is cruel and I am the only decent one in it. First they refused to give me golden shoes, then they made me lie on wet linen and stand for hours in a draft. Finally, I am tricked into marriage; and when I show my courage by going out into the world to find out what that’s like and see how I will be treated there, I am captured by a human puppy who ties me to a mast and sets me adrift on a great ocean. And all the while the emperor’s horse runs about with golden shoes on; and that’s almost the most annoying part of it all. In this world you must not ask for sympathy. My life has been most interesting.… But what difference does that make if no one ever hears about it? … But does the world deserve to hear my story? … If it did, I would have been given the golden shoes. Had I got them, it would have brought honor to the stable. The stable missed its chance, so did the world, for everything is over.”
But everything was not over; some young girls who were out rowing on the pond saw the little ship.
“Look, there is a wooden shoe,” one of them said.
“Someone has tied a beetle to the mast,” said another; and she leaned over the side of the boat and grabbed the wooden shoe. With a tiny pair of scissors she carefully cut the woolen thread, so that no harm came to the dung beetle. When they returned to shore the girl let him go in the grass. “Crawl or fly, whichever you can, for freedom is a precious gift,” she said.
The dung beetle flew straight in through an open window of a large building and landed in the long, soft, silken mane of the emperor’s horse, who was standing in the stable where they both belonged. He held on tightly to the mane, then he relaxed and began to think about life.
“Here I am, sitting on the emperor’s horse. I am the rider.… What am I saying?” The dung beetle was talking out loud. “Now everything is clear to me! And I know it is true! Didn’t the blacksmith ask me if I didn’t have some idea why the emperor’s horse was being shod with golden shoes? Now I understand that it was for my sake that the horse was given golden shoes.”
The dung beetle was in the best of humors. “It is traveling that did it!” he thought. “It broadens your horizon and makes everything clear to you.”
The sun shone through the window. Its rays fell upon the horse and the dung beetle. “The world is not so bad,” remarked the dung beetle. “It all depends on how you look at it.” And the world, indeed, was beautiful, when the emperor’s horse was awarded golden shoes because the dung beetle was to ride it.
“I must dismount,” he thought, “and go and tell the other dung beetl
es how I have been honored. I will tell them of my wonderful adventures and how I enjoyed traveling abroad. And I’ll tell them, too, that I have decided to stay at home until the horse wears out his golden shoes.”
106
What Father Does Is Always Right
Now I want to tell you a story that I heard myself when I was a very little boy, and every time that I have thought of it since, it has seemed to me to be more beautiful. For stories are like people: some—though not all—improve with age, and that is a blessing.
Have you ever been in Denmark and seen the countryside? If you have, then you must have seen one of those really old cottages that has a thatched roof that is overgrown with moss and a stork’s nest perched on its ridge. The walls are crooked. The windows are small, and only one of them has a hasp and hinges so that it can be opened. The oven for baking bread juts out of the wall like a well-filled stomach. There are a hedge of elderberries and a tiny pond surrounded by willow trees, where a duck and some ducklings swim. In the yard there is an old dog that barks at everyone who goes by.
In such a cottage, far out in the country, there once lived a farmer and his wife. They had little that they could get along without, but they did have something, and that was a horse that had to graze at the edge of the road because they didn’t have a paddock. Sometimes the farmer rode on the horse when he went to town; and sometimes his neighbor borrowed it, and that was to the farmer’s advantage, for country people believe that one good turn deserves another. But one day the farmer realized that he’d be doing himself a better turn if he sold the horse or traded it for something which he had more use for, though he didn’t know what it could be.
“That you’ll find out soon enough,” said his wife. “You know best, Father. There’s a market in town today. Why don’t you ride in on the horse, and there you can sell it or trade it for something else. Whatever you do, I am sure it will be right.”
She tied his cravat, which she knew how to do better than anybody else. She made a double bow because that made him look more gallant. She brushed his hat with the palm of her hand, and then she kissed him warmly on the lips. Off he rode on the horse that was to be sold or traded, just as he saw fit; for striking a bargain was something he knew how to do.