Fernan. The first that occurs to you; if you invent it, all the better.
Uncle R. O señor! I can't invent. Those inventions are flashes of the mind; mine is too dull, Don Fernan; but I'll tell you a story that I've known ever since I cut my teeth. I've lost them all now; so your worship can judge what date it must bear.
Fernan. The older the better. Stories are like wine, age improves their flavor.
Uncle R. Well then, señor, there was once a rich tradesman who was father to a very fine son. He brought him up like a king's child, and, besides the accomplishments of a gentleman, in which the boy came to excel, had him taught in all branches as if he had meant to make him doctor of every thing. The son grew to be a young man with a will of his own; bearded and dashing; and for gallantry there was not another like him.
One day he told his father that the place had become too narrow for him; he could not content himself in it, and he wanted to go away.
"And where do you want to go?" asked the father.
"To see the world," answered the young man.
"You are like the grasshopper that jumps he don't know where," said the tradesman. "How are you to get along in those strange countries without experience?"
"Father, 'He that has knowledge may go where he will,'" the son replied; and as the old cock had allowed the young one to run so much to wings that he couldn't hold him, the youth took his arms, his horse of noble stirp, and set out to see the world.
When he had travelled three days through wilds and thickets, he came up with a man who was carrying a double cart-load—that is to say, a hundred and fifty arrobas of taramee upon his shoulders.