“Content at this trade!” exclaimed the man. “I would rather have been brought up to any other. What with low wages and high lumber, there is nothing left when your work is done. I don’t know who you may be; but if you’re thinking of going into this business, let me warn you against it. For my part, I don’t see why some people have it so hard and others so easy. There’s a couple of rich men that I work for over in the main street, that have both of them made big fortunes since I came into this miserable little shop. And around the corner from them is another man I do odd jobs for—one of the king’s officers; he has I don’t know how many servants to wait on him, and plenty of money. Yes, and even the king himself, if a poor man may look so high—there he is with nothing to do but enjoy himself and rule over the rest of us. What justice is there in all this? Everybody has all he wants, and is happy, but me.”
Discouraged at his repeated failures, the king turned away from the crowded city and went into the country. There, as he walked along a quiet road by himself, he came to a little cottage with a bench beside the door. In front of it was a flower-bed filled with pinks and lady-slippers; in the rear, a small plot of ground that appeared to have been just digged. A shovel and a hoe were lying there, evidently left only for the dinner-hour. The door of the cottage was open, and a laboring-man well on in years was seen within at his noonday meal.
The king, in the guise of a wayfarer, stopped before the gate, and was at once asked to enter and be seated at the table. Accepting the invitation, he sat down and partook of the humble repast. As soon as it was finished the two betook themselves to the bench beside the door. Said the king:
“You have a hard time, I fear, my friend. This is but a little plot from which to get your living.”
“But you’ve no idea,” replied the man, “how much this ground yields. It is planted in potatoes, and a finer crop you never saw. I’m just digging them, and shall have enough to last me on till spring, with some to sell—yes, and a few to give a poor neighbor, beside.”
“But is that all you have to depend upon?” asked the king.
“Oh no,” replied the man; “I go out to day’s work on the farms around, and, beside being able to pay for some new clothes, I’ve put by a barrel of flour for the winter; it stands over in that far corner. And you see my woodpile stretching along the fence yonder. I’ve had to work hard for these things, but they are all that I need, and I am content.”
“‘Content’!” cried the king, as though he could not believe his own ears. “But have you no other wants beside these?”
“I might have,” said the man. “There are plenty that offer me their company, but I refuse to entertain them.”