THERE was once a father who had two sons. One was ambitious, and sensible, and clever enough to do almost anything. But the younger one was so stupid he made no progress at all. When people saw how useless he was, they said, “His father will have plenty of trouble with him.”
If there was any task that needed doing, it fell to the lot of the elder son, who never failed to do his work faithfully and well, unless his father asked him to fetch something in the evening after dark. Then, if the errand would compel him to pass through the churchyard or along a dismal stretch of roadway, he would say: “Oh no, father, I cannot go! I am afraid. It would make me shiver and shake.”
Occasionally when the household gathered around the fire after supper, with very likely the company of a neighbor or two, some one would tell a ghost story which would cause the listeners’ flesh to creep, and they would exclaim, “How you make me shiver!”
The youngest son, however, as he sat in the corner and heard these exclamations, could not imagine what was meant. “There’s something queer about it,” said he. “They say: ‘It makes me shiver! It makes me shiver!’ But it doesn’t make me shiver a bit. Shivering is an accomplishment I don’t understand.”
One day his father said to him, “Listen, you lad in the corner there, you are growing big and strong. You must learn some trade by which to get a living. See how your brother works, but you are not worth your salt.”
“Well, father,” he responded, “I am quite ready to learn something. With what shall I begin? I would very much like to learn how to shiver and shake, for about that I know nothing.”
The elder son laughed when he heard him speak thus. “Good heavens!” he thought, “what a simpleton my brother is! He will never be good for anything as long as he lives.”
His father sighed and said, “What shivering means you may learn easily enough, but such knowledge will not help you any in getting your bread.”
Soon afterward the sexton called at the house, and the father confided to him his anxiety about his younger son. “It is quite evident,” said he, “that the lad will never be any credit to us. Would you believe that when I asked him how he was going to earn his living, he said he would like to learn to shiver and shake?”
“If that’s what he wants to learn,” said the sexton, “we can easily gratify him. I can teach him that myself. Just let him serve me for a while and I’ll put the polish on him.”