“Well,” said the other with apparent reluctance, “that you may do if you will wait for a short time till I am ready. There is one piece of learning which I have not yet fully mastered.”
So the student waited, but he soon became impatient and entreated to be allowed to get into the sack at once and satisfy his great thirst for knowledge. Then the man pretended to take pity on him and told him to lower the sack to the ground and open the mouth of it. That done, the farmer got out, and the student started to get in, feet first, saying, “I want you to make haste and pull me up as fast as possible.”
“Stop, stop!” cried the man. “That won’t do.”
Then he laid hold of the student by the shoulders and thrust him into the sack head downward, tied it up, and swung the disciple of wisdom up on the bough of the tree. When the student was dangling up aloft in the air, the man said: “How do you feel now, my dear fellow? Do you find that wisdom comes with experience? Stay there quietly till you become wiser.”
Thereupon he mounted the student’s horse and rode off; but an hour later he sent some one to release the prisoner in the sack.
THE ENCHANTED DOVE
A POOR maidservant was once traveling with her master’s family in a coach through a great wood. When they were in the very middle of the wood, a band of robbers sprang out of a thicket and killed every one of the travelers that they could lay their hands on. Only the maidservant escaped. She, in her fright, jumped out of the coach and hid behind a tree.
When the robbers had made off with their booty she came from her place of concealment and wept as she saw what had happened. “Alas!” she cried, “here I am left alone in this wild forest. I can never find my way out, and not a human creature lives in it, so that I shall certainly die of hunger.”
She wandered about for some time looking for a pathway, but could not find one. Evening came, and she sat down under a tree and made up her mind to spend the night there, no matter what might happen. But soon a little white dove came flying to her with a small golden key in its beak. It put the key in the girl’s hand, and said: “Examine closely the bark of the tree-trunk you are leaning against, and you will find a lock which this key will fit. Turn the key in that lock, and a door will open and reveal a cupboard in which is food and drink. Take all you need.”