Three fruits—three apples—hung
on the slender upward-bent twigs; one was of middle
size, long-shaped, and milk-white; the second, large,
round, bright-red; the third, small, wrinkled, yellowish.
The whole tree faintly rustled, though there was no
wind. It emitted a shrill plaintive ringing sound,
as of a glass bell; it seemed it was conscious of
Jaffar’s approach.
‘Youth!’ said the old man, ’pick
any one of these apples and know, if you pick and
eat the white one, you will be the wisest of all men;
if you pick and eat the red, you will be rich as the
Jew Rothschild; if you pick and eat the yellow one,
you will be liked by old women. Make up your mind!
and do not delay. Within an hour the apples will
wither, and the tree itself will sink into the dumb
depths of the earth!’
Jaffar looked down, and pondered. ‘How
am I to act?’ he said in an undertone, as though
arguing with himself. ’If you become too
wise, maybe you will not care to live; if you become
richer than any one, every one will envy you; I had
better pick and eat the third, the withered apple!’
And so he did; and the old man laughed a toothless
laugh, and said: ’O wise young man!
You have chosen the better part! What need have
you of the white apple? You are wiser than Solomon
as it is. And you’ve no need of the red
apple either.... You will be rich without it.
Only your wealth no one will envy.’
‘Tell me, old man,’ said Jaffar, rousing
himself, ’where lives the honoured mother of
our Caliph, protected of heaven?’
The old man bowed down to the earth, and pointed out
to the young man the way.
Who in Bagdad knows not the Sun of the Universe, the
great, the renowned Jaffar?
April 1878.
There was once a town, the inhabitants of which were
so passionately fond of poetry, that if some weeks
passed by without the appearance of any good new poems,
they regarded such a poetic dearth as a public misfortune.
They used at such times to put on their worst clothes,
to sprinkle ashes on their heads; and, assembling
in crowds in the public squares, to shed tears and
bitterly to upbraid the muse who had deserted them.
On one such inauspicious day, the young poet Junius
came into a square, thronged with the grieving populace.
With rapid steps he ascended a forum constructed for
this purpose, and made signs that he wished to recite
a poem.
The lictors at once brandished their fasces.
‘Silence! attention!’ they shouted loudly,
and the crowd was hushed in expectation.
‘Friends! Comrades!’ began Junius,
in a loud but not quite steady voice:—
’Friends! Comrades! Lovers
of the Muse!
Ye worshippers of beauty and of grace!
Let not a moment’s gloom dismay
your souls,
Your heart’s desire is nigh, and
light shall banish darkness.’
