Ah! you are so great, and I am so small,
I hardly can think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
A whisper within me seemed to say:
You are more than the Earth,
Though you are such a dot;
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot.
[THE MAGIC GIRDLE ]
Once upon a time, a little cobbler sat at his bench mending a pair of shoes. He whistled a merry tune as he worked.
The day was very warm, and the wax which he had been using began to melt. In less time than it takes to tell it, a swarm, of flies lighted upon the melting wax.
"Ho, ho!" exclaimed the little cobbler. "Who invited you to a feast?"
He threw the shoe that he was mending, at the flies, and many fell dead from the blow. The cobbler counted the flies as they lay dead, and he said, "Not so bad! That blow should make me famous."
Then the cobbler took a girdle and painted this rhyme upon it:
Ha, ha! Ho, ho!
Ten at one blow.
"Now I shall travel around the world wearing this girdle, and it will make me famous," said the cobbler.
So the queer little man put on the girdle and started out to seek his fortune.