The Fruit Of Happiness
by
Once upon a time there was a servant who served a wise man, and cooked for him his cabbage and his onions and his pot-herbs and his broth, day after day, time in and time out, for seven years.
In those years the servant was well enough contented, but no one likes to abide in the same place forever, and so one day he took it into his head that he would like to go out into the world to see what kind of a fortune a man might make there for himself. “Very well,” says the wise man, the servant’s master; “you have served me faithfully these seven years gone, and now that you ask leave to go you shall go. But it is little or nothing in the way of money that I can give you, and so you will have to be content with what I can afford. See, here is a little pebble, and its like is not to be found in the seven kingdoms, for whoever holds it in his mouth can hear while he does so all that the birds and the beasts say to one another. Take it–it is yours, and, if you use it wisely, it may bring you a fortune.”
The servant would rather have had the money in hand than the magic pebble, but, as nothing better was to be had, he took the little stone, and, bidding his master good-bye, trudged out into the world, to seek his fortune. Well, he jogged on and on, paying his way with the few pennies he had saved in his seven years of service, but for all of his travelling nothing of good happened to him until, one morning, he came to a lonely place where there stood a gallows, and there he sat him down to rest, and it is just in such an unlikely place as this that a man’s best chance of fortune comes to him sometimes.
As the servant sat there, there came two ravens flying, and lit upon the cross-beam overhead. There they began talking to one another, and the servant popped the pebble into his mouth to hear what they might say.
“Yonder is a traveller in the world,” said the first raven.
“Yes,” said the second, “and if he only knew how to set about it, his fortune is as good as made.”
“How is that so?” said the first raven.
“Why, thus,” said the second. “If he only knew enough to follow yonder road over the hill, he would come by-and-by to a stone cross where two roads meet, and there he would find a man sitting. If he would ask it of him, that man would lead him to the garden where the fruit of happiness grows.”
“The fruit of happiness!” said the first raven, “and of what use would the fruit of happiness be to him?”
“What use? I tell you, friend, there is no fruit in the world like that, for one has only to hold it in one’s hand and wish, and whatever one asks for one shall have.”
You may guess that when the servant understood the talk of the ravens he was not slow in making use of what he heard. Up he scrambled, and away he went as fast as his legs could carry him. On and on he travelled, until he came to the cross-roads and the stone cross of which the raven spoke, and there, sure enough, sat the traveller. He was clad in a weather-stained coat, and he wore dusty boots, and the servant bade him good-morning.
How should the servant know that it was an angel whom he beheld, and not a common wayfarer?
“Whither away, comrade,” asked the traveller.
“Out in the world,” said the servant, “to seek my fortune. And what I want to know is this–will you guide me to where I can find the fruit of happiness?”