easter lilies.
OLD NICOLAI.
By Paul Fort.
One fine summer morning, many years ago, there sat upon a log, in a garden in Russia, an old man, who was mending a rake. The rake was a wooden one, and he was cutting a tooth to take the place of one that was broken. He was a stout, healthy old fellow, dressed in a coarse blue blouse and trousers; and as he sat on the log, whittling away at the piece of wood which was to become a rake-tooth, he sang, in a voice that was somewhat the worse for wear, but still quite as good a voice as you could expect an old gardener to have, a little song. He sang it in Russian, of course, and this was the way it ran:
“Zvœri raboti ne znaiut
Ptitzi zhivut bes truda
Liudi ne zvœri ne ptitzi
Liudi rabotoi zhivut.”
Expressed in English, this ditty simply set forth the fact that the beasts and the birds do not labor, but Man, who is neither a beast nor a bird, is obliged to work.
The old fellow seemed to like the lines, for he sang them over several times, as he went on with his whittling. Just as he was about to make a new start on his “Zvœri raboti,” a boy, about fifteen years old, came out of the house which stood by the side of the garden, and walked toward him.
“Nicolai Petrovitch,” said the boy, sitting down on a wheelbarrow, which was turned over in front of the gardener, “why is it that you are so fond of singing that song? One might suppose you are lazy, but we know very well you are not. And then, too, there is no sense in it. Birds don’t work, to be sure, but what have you to say about horses and oxen? I’m sure they work hard enough—at least, some of them.”