THE PLOUGHMAN AND HIS SONS
A wealthy Ploughman, drawing near his end,
Called in his sons apart from every friend,
And said, "When of your sire bereft,
The heritage your father left
Guard well, nor sell a single field.
A treasure in it is concealed.
The place, precisely, I don't know,
But industry will serve to show.
The harvest past, Time's forelock take,
And search with plough, and spade, and rake;
Turn over every inch of sod,
Nor leave unsearched a single clod!"
The father died. The sons in vain
Turned o'er the soil, and o'er again.
That year their acres bore
More grain than e'er before.
Though hidden money found they none,
Yet had their father wisely done,
To show by such a measure
That toil itself is treasure.
The farmer's patient care and toil
Are oftener wanting than the soil.
THE BAG OF DUST
There was once a prince who went to his father, the King, to receive his fortune. And when the King ordered it to be brought in, what do you think it was—a great, gray bag of dust!
The Prince, now that he was old enough to go out in the world, had expected a very different fortune from this—a Kingdom all his own in some other land, a chest of jewels, and a gold crown.
But his father, the King, helped the Prince to put the bag of dust, which was very heavy indeed, upon his back.
"You are to carry this to the boundary line of the Kingdom without once dropping it," he said. And the Prince, who always did what his father, the King, said, set out.