This is what the age is calling for, if rightly understood, in its countless theories and projects of reform.
ODD STORIES.
IX.
KURDIG.
The sun was setting in the vale of Kashmir. Under the blessing of its rays the admiring fakir would again have said that here undoubtedly was the place of the earthly paradise where mankind was born in the morning of the world. Something of the same thought may have stirred the mind of a dwarfed and hump-backed man with bow-legs, who, from carrying on his shoulders a heavy barrel up the steep and crooked path of a hillside, stopped to rest while he looked mournfully at the sun. Herds of goats that strayed near him, and flocks of sheep that grazed below, might have provoked their deformed neighbor to envy their shapely and well-clad beauty and peaceful movements. Could he have found it in his heart to curse the sun which had seemed to view with such complacency his hard toils amid the burden and heat of the day, the compassionate splendor of its last look upon field, river, and mountain would still have touched his soul. As it was, he saw that earth and heaven were beautiful, and that he was not. Whether he uttered it or not, his keen, sad eyes and thoughtful face were a lament that his hard lot had made him the one ugly feature in that gentle scene. No, not the only one; he shared his singularity with the little green snake that now crawled near his feet. Yet even this reptile, he thought, could boast its sinuous beauty, its harmony with the order of things; for it was a perfect snake, and he—well, he was scarce a man. Soon, however, better thoughts took possession of his mind, and, when he shouldered his barrel to climb the hill, he thought that one of those beautiful peris, whose mission it is to console earth’s sorrowing children ere yet their wings are admitted to heaven, thus murmured in his ear, with a speech that was like melody: “O Kurdig, child of toil! thy lot is indeed hard, but thou bearest it not for thyself alone, and thy master and rewarder hath set thee thy task; and for this thou shalt have the unseen for thy friends, love for thy thought, and heaven for thy solace.” As he ascended the hill it seemed to him that his load grew lighter, as if by help of invisible hands. He looked for a moment on the snake which hissed at him, and though but an hour ago, moved by a feud as old as man, he would have ground it in hate beneath his foot, he now let it pass. The crooked man ascended the hill, while the crooked serpent passed downward; and it was as if one understood the other. At length the dwarf Kurdig reached the yard of the palace, which stood on a shady portion of the eminence, but, as he laid down his burden with a smile and a good word before his employer, suddenly he felt the sharp cut of a whip across the shoulders. He writhed and smarted, feeling as if the old serpent had stung him.
Kurdig was one of those hewers of wood and drawers of water whose daily being in the wonderful vale of Kashmir seemed but a harsh contrast of fallen man with the paradise that once was his home. When he did not carry barrels of wine, or fruit-loads, or other burdens to the top of the hill, he assisted his poor sister and her child in the task of making shawls for one of a number of large shawl-dealers who gave employment to the people of the valley. With them the dearest days of his life were spent. At odd times he taught the little girl the names of flowers, the virtues of herbs, and even how to read and write—no small accomplishments among peasant folk, and only gained by the dwarf himself because his mind was as patient and as shrewd as his body was misshapen. His great desire for all useful knowledge found exercise in all the common stores of mother-wit and rustic science which the unlettered people around preserved as their inheritance. How to build houses, to make chairs, ovens, hats; how to catch fish and conduct spring-waters; how to apply herbs for cure and healing; how to make oils and crude wine—these things he knew as none other of all the peasantry about could pretend to know. He had seen, too, and had sometimes followed in the hunt, the beasts of the forest; nor was he, as we have seen, afraid of reptiles. He could row and swim, and while others danced he could sing and play. This variety of accomplishments slowly acquired for the dwarf an influence which, though little acknowledged, was widespread. In all the work and play of the rude folk around him he was the almost innocent and unregarded master-spirit. The improvement of their houses owed something to his hand, and their feasts were in good part planned by him; for, while he acted as their servant, he was in truth their master. To cure the common fevers, aches, hurts, he had well-tried simples, and his searches and experiments had added something new to the herbal remedies of his fathers. All his talents as doctor, musician, mechanic, and story-teller his neighbors did not fail to make use of, while the dwarf still kept in the background, and his ugliness, whenever accident had made him at all prominent, was laughed at as much as ever. Even the poor creatures his knowledge had cured, and his good-nature had not tasked to pay him, uttered a careless laugh when they praised their physician, as if they said: “Well, who would have thought the ugly little crook-back was so cunning?”
Yet there was one who never joined in the general smile which accompanied the announcement of the name of Kurdig. This was his sister’s child. Never without pain could she hear his name jestingly mentioned; always with reverence, and sometimes with tears, she spoke of him. The wan, slender child had grown almost from its feeble infancy by the side of the dwarf. When able to leave her mother’s sole care, he had taught the child her first games and songs, and step by step had instructed her in all the rude home-lessons prevalent among the country people—how to knit, to weave, to read and to write, according to the necessities of her place and condition. The wonder was that from a pale and sickly infant the child grew as by a charm, under the eye of the dwarf, into a blooming girl, whose quiet and simple demeanor detracted nothing from her peculiar loveliness, and made her habits of industry the more admirable. There was, then, one being in the world whom the dwarf undoubtedly loved, and by whom he was loved in return.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The True and the False Infallibility of the Popes, etc. By the late Bishop Fessler. Translated by Father St. John, of the Edgbaston Oratory. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.