The reign of King Oberon

by Walter Jerrold

The merchant asked to see it, and when he had examined it, “Glass shoes” said he, “are not by any means such rare articles, my good friend, as you think here in Rodenkirchen, because you do not happen to go much into the world. However,” said he, after hemming a little, “I will give you a good price for it, because I happen to have the very fellow of it.” And he bid the countryman a thousand dollars for it.

“A thousand dollars are money, my father used to say when he drove fat oxen to market,” replied John Wilde, in a mocking tone; “but it will not leave my hands for that shabby price, and, for my own part, it may ornament the foot of my daughter’s doll. Harkye, friend; I have heard a sort of little song sung about the glass shoe, and it is not for a parcel of dirt that it will go out of my hands. Tell me now, my good fellow, should you happen to know the knack of it, that in every furrow I make when I am ploughing I should find a ducat. If not, the shoe is still mine, and you may inquire for glass shoes at those other markets.”

The merchant made still a great many attempts, and twisted and turned in every direction to get the shoe, but when he found the farmer inflexible he agreed to what John desired, and swore to the performance of it.

Cunning John believed in him, and gave him up the glass shoe, for he knew right well with whom he had to do. So the business being ended, away went the merchant with his glass shoe.

Without a moment’s delay, John repaired to his stable, got ready his horses and his plough, and drove out to the field. He selected a piece of ground where he would have the shortest turns possible, and began to plough. Hardly had the plough turned up the first sod, when up sprang a ducat out of the ground, and it was the same with every fresh furrow he made. There was now no end of his ploughing, and John Wilde soon bought eight new horses, and put them into the stable to the eight he already had—and their mangers were never without plenty of oats in them—that he might be able every two hours to yoke two fresh horses, and so be enabled to drive them the faster.

John was now insatiable in ploughing, every morning he was out before sunrise, and many a time he ploughed on till after midnight. Summer and winter it was plough, plough with him evermore, except when the ground was frozen as hard as a stone. But he always ploughed by himself, and never suffered any one to go out with him, or to come to him when he was at work, for John understood too well the nature of his crop to let people see what it was he ploughed so constantly for.

But it fared far worse with himself than with his horses, who ate good oats and were regularly changed and relieved, while he grew pale and meagre by reason of his continual working and toiling. His wife and children had no longer any comfort of him, he never went to the ale-house or the club, he withdrew himself from every one, and scarcely ever spoke a single word, but went about silent and wrapped up in his own thoughts. All the day long he toiled for his ducats, and at night he had to count them and to plan and meditate how he might find out a still swifter kind of plough.

His wife and the neighbours lamented over his strange conduct, his dulness and melancholy, and began to think that he was grown foolish. Everybody pitied his wife and children, for they imagined that the numerous horses that he kept in his stable, and the preposterous mode of agriculture that he pursued, with his unnecessary and superfluous ploughing, must soon leave him without house or land.

But their anticipations were not fulfilled. True it is, the poor man never enjoyed a happy or contented hour since he began to plough the ducats up out of the ground. The old saying held good in his case, that he who gives himself up to the pursuit of gold is half way in the claws of the evil one. Flesh and blood cannot bear perpetual labour, and John Wilde did not long hold out against this running through the furrows day and night. He got through the first spring, but one day, in the second, he dropped down at the tail of the plough like an exhausted November fly. Out of the pure thirst after gold he was wasted away and dried up to nothing whereas he had been a very strong and hearty man the day the shoe of the little underground man fell into his hands.