"What do you want?" I asked.
"Many a thing," said he, "many a thing."
I squatted on the ground in front of him, and he continued—
"You that are always travelling, did you ever meet a contented person in all your travels?"
"Yes," said I, "I met a man yesterday, three hills away from here, and he told me he was happy."
"Maybe he wasn't a poor man?"
"I asked him that, and he said he had enough to be going on with."
"I wonder what he had."
"I wondered too, and he told me.—He said that he had a wife, a son, an apple-tree, and a fiddle.
"He said, that his wife was dumb, his son was deaf, his apple-tree was barren, and his fiddle was broken."