“My son, here is a package which you must not open until your twenty-fifth birthday. Upon that day, you will open this package and read the instructions contained in it, and I ask you to follow those instructions closely. You must guard this package as you would guard your own safety and yield its possession to no one, not even for one moment.”
I took it, observing that it was very light of weight and seemed certainly not to be momentous, if considered from that point of view.
II
I here give further insight into my character for the delectation of the reader, recounting in precise and careful manner a short story concerning an experience that I had while waiting for the arrival of my twenty-fifth birthday.
I NEED not detail all the vicissitudes through which I passed before I reached that day of all days, my twenty-fifth birthday. I may simply say, that, owing to the fault above mentioned, I was thrown upon the world with such force that I hit it good and hard, after my father’s death, and that the world and I seemed to find nothing in which we were in perfect harmony. I speak of the talking world; for with Nature I never had the slightest trouble—she understood me and I understood her. But nobody had any faith in my word, notwithstanding I never promised to do a thing which was not done. That very trait of character saved me from starvation on several occasions, one of which I may mention.
I was out in the country, among the mountains, and an eagle was carrying away a little child. I was near at hand as the bird got its prey, and I was then about ten years of age. I had been practicing with a sling and was traveling alone the mountain road from house to house, having had nothing to eat for several days. I had just gone into the barnyard of this particular house, when the bird of prey swept down and I heard the cry of the child and its mother.
I ran to where she stood, wringing her hands and screaming.
“Do you want the child?” I asked.
She turned her tear-stained face upon me with a look of astonishment, undoubtedly produced by my question.