CHAPTER XIV.
This Book is a Mirror wherein the Wise Man seeth Wisdom but the Fool seeth Folly.—Shacabac.
“I don’t think that I quite understand,” began Muley Mustapha, when he found himself alone with his gifted spouse for a few moments before dinner, and while the other dignitaries were pleasantly engaged in restoring tranquillity to the realm by superintending the decapitation of the disaffected.
“You mean that you don’t quite understand that you think,” interposed the good lady, sweetly. “Well, I will explain. The child whom you wickedly designed to bring up in a life of shame and turbulence was not, as you thought, a girl, but a boy!
“I determined, as I think I told you at the time, to save the innocent being from the contamination of a wicked world and the evil example of an unworthy sire. The Physician whom you ruthlessly put to death consented to the pious deception, for which I have ever revered his memory. He was a worthy man, and understood my nervous system better than any leech that I have ever known. Another kind of husband would have appreciated his merits, but let that pass. As for the old Soothsayer, he deserved his doom for lacking faith in his own predictions. I regret not his death. No government can be conducted safely unless its members be able to convince themselves and others that with them all wisdom dieth. Frequent changes of administration, save in favor of our own party, are disastrous to the welfare of any country.
“Henceforth place your trust in me; and I will see to it that all official prophecies come out correctly, though it cost a new soothsayer every week.
“I leave you now,” she added, “to prepare my daughter-in-law for her bridal, and to instruct her in the proper way of managing a husband. I fear me much that the present Queen of Nhulpar is sadly lacking in decision of character. His Majesty the King, I am told, keepeth State secrets from her ears,—a great error on the part of a dutiful spouse.”
It was even as the good Kayenna had said. Young Muley Mustapha was a genuine Prince, with all his father’s old-time courage, re-enforced by a strain of firmness inherited from his noble mother. The rebel horde, who had taken up the false Soothsayer’s taunt that the youth was effeminate, no longer repeated the insult, partly because the lad had proved his manhood on the field, but chiefly because, after Al Choppah had finished his work, not one of them was left to talk indiscreetly, nor, indeed, to talk at all.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the harem seclusion in which he had been reared, the youth was more than commonly free from bashfulness in the presence of women; and his own harem (for he did not copy his sire’s monogamous example) was ruled by him in right royal fashion. “In numbers is safety,” was his sagacious maxim. Yet, because of the mystery surrounding his youth, he was ever known throughout three kingdoms as “Her Majesty the King.”
When the aged Pasha went to his account, a few years later, everybody in official position said, as with one voice, that, with the exception of his illustrious successor, he was the wisest and best ruler that had ever reigned in Ubikwi. The same had been said of his sire and his grandsire and his greatgrandsire, so that it was evident that virtue and wisdom were hereditary in that noble family, as they are in all reigning dynasties everywhere.
Kayenna lived to see her son mount successively the thrones of Ubikwi, Kopaul, and Nhulpar, and to supervise the education of a large and interesting family of children and grandchildren, dying at the last of a tetanus superinduced by the arduous labor of umpiring a debate on “Woman Suffrage.”
Shacabac lived to a ripe old age. Of his latter years his biographer says, “Allah had granted to him length of days and the divine faculty of repose, so that, while saying much, he thought but little, and worked hardly at all.”
When his mental faculties had become sufficiently impaired, the gallant King of Nhulpar appointed him Regius Professor of Political Economy in the National University,—a position which he filled with great credit for many years. By his thoughtful lectures and essays, “Patriotism Another Name for Selfishness,” “A Nation’s Debt a Nation’s Wealth,” “Our Country always Wrong,”—and especially by his erudite monograph on “Finance,” so profound that not even the ablest minds could comprehend it,—his fame spread throughout all lands, and made him the envy of philosophers all over the earth. His stately monument bears the simple motto which governed him through life,—
“LOVE THYSELF: SO SHALL THY
AFFECTION BE RETURNED.”
LAGNIAPPE.[1]
When the great and good Shacabac had completed, as he thought, his incomparable book of Wisdom, he said to himself, “Here at last, is a perfect work of mortal man,” and went, none too humbly, to the venerable philosopher Woppajah, from whom he had imbibed his first draughts of knowledge. But the Master, after skimming a few lines and paying the tribute of a yawn, turned over the leaves until he came to the last chapter, when he pointed his finger to the number thereof, and, lo, it was the fatal number—thirteen!
Abashed at the silent rebuke, the Sage would have withdrawn in confusion, but the good man bade him stay. “Let this,” he said, “be a lesson unto thee; and, that thou mayst ever be ready to extract the cork of hope from the demijohn of disappointment, and avert the debasing influence of superstition by always heading off an inauspicious omen, write now a fourteenth chapter and bestow it upon a grateful world, which ever rejoiceth to get something for which it hath paid naught.”
Rakkam, the tooth-puller, built up an enormous trade and grew in riches, by drawing two teeth for one price, and even though one of them were sound, the patient would boast that he was so much ahead, which meant out of his head.
It is a simple world and easily pleased. Ali-Kazam, the wise, when his partner said: “Here be three apples to divide between us twain, and neither of us hath a knife to carve them withal,” merely replied, “Naught could be easier, my brother.” So saying, he ate one apple, and handing another to his partner, said, “Behold, we now have one apiece.” Thus was justice attained and wisdom rewarded.
Gratitude is one of the invertebrate virtues. It doth not crowd its more robust brothers out of the way in order to push to the front and assert itself obtrusively. Even when sought, it shrinks from notice, or modestly withdraws entirely from the field of action. Saped, a young man whose wisdom had not grown apace with his liver, once complained to a great physician that his head ached in the morning and that he had no desire to break his fast, adding, “I fear me that I must have eaten something that disagreed with me.” Now the physician could read the human face without glasses, and scanning the grapevine tendrils which adorned the cheeks of the young man, he said, “Nay, I am sure it was not anything that you have eaten,” with a significant emphasis on the last word.
“But,” cried the youth, “it could not have been anything that I omitted to eat.” The physician, unheeding this remark, continued, “Henceforth, if you would escape headaches and other ills of the flesh, you must drink wine only at dinner.” The young man thanked him and went away, saying to the people that the physician had counselled him to dine all the time. But the physician was not grateful for the good report, nor was Saped any longer, after he had received the bill of the wise leech.
Many a man is grateful at being told a piece of news, until he is enjoined to keep a secret. Then doth it weigh like a millstone around his neck or a wife upon his knees.
Some are grateful, though possessing neither wealth nor health nor high station, because they have had illustrious ancestors. It is a harmless kind of pride; for who would be cruel enough to ask them if such “descent” did not also imply degeneracy?
Many a man who never murmured at poverty complaineth loudly when he hath grown rich enough to be assessed for taxes.
When Adam was expelled for eating the apple he blamed “the woman.” She said naught, but years afterwards she invented pie; and the worst of these is apple-pie.
A conscientious publisher, who had printed an unauthorized edition of a great work (which modesty forbids mentioning here by name), was stricken with contrition some months afterwards, and wrote to the author saying: “Truly, kind Sir, I know that I have erred in publishing your invaluable work without leave, but, albeit there is no legal obligation on me to recognize your interests, in the absence of any rational copyright law, yet my soul tells me that you have a moral right which may not be denied. Wherefore I have directed that a statement of account of sales be sent to you herewith. As you will perceive that the venture unhappily hath resulted in a loss, your remittance of a moiety thereof will be received by me with a gratitude which will go far toward allaying the pangs of a remorse-torn sinner.”
The prudent pirate burieth not his treasure in a remote cave or sandbank, but bestoweth it in the safety deposit vaults, for the day when he may have to face a stern but not implacable jury.
The truly good man may love his enemies; but it taketh a hermit, dwelling alone on an inaccessible island, to love his neighbors.
When the great Caliph Omar—may his memory be forever blessed!—beheld the mountain of manuscripts heaped up in the Alexandrian Library, he asked, “Of what doth this Himalaya consist?” The Librarian, proudly waving his hand about, replied: “For the greater part, or say about ninety-five per centum, it consisteth of inestimable works of fiction based strictly upon the facts and so forth of History. They have all been selected from the best-selling nov—” But the Caliph, who had the gift of prophecy and could foresee even unto the present day, and perceived also that the folios were extremely dry, ordered that they be all fed to the furnaces of the baths, which had not been lighted for many moons because that the Egyptian tyrant, Kholrobba, had oppressed the people with a Fuel Trust. Allah is just, and the soul of Kholrobba suffered not from cold when it went home.
A conqueror’s hymn of thanksgiving for victory needeth no wings. It reacheth its destination by the force of gravity.
And the paradox of gratitude is this: that the author is thankful if he know that the reader is not, when he beholds the mystic word in a foreign tongue,—
“FINIS.”