by Mark Twain
Chapter IV
"Chose yet again." It was the fairy's voice.
"Two gifts remain. And do not despair. In the beginning there was butone that was precious, and it is still here."
"Wealth--which is power! How blind I was!" said the man. "Now, at last,life will be worth the living. I will spend, squander, dazzle. Thesemockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and I will feedmy hungry heart with their envy. I will have all luxuries, all joys, allenchantments of the spirit, all contentments of the body that man holdsdear. I will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--everypinchbeck grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth.I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass; Iwas ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so."
Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering ina mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed inrags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:
"Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! Andmiscalled, every one. They are not gifts, but merely lendings. Pleasure,Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for lastingrealities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty. The fairy said true; in all herstore there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was notvalueless. How poor and cheap and mean I know those others now to be,compared with that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly one,that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the pains that persecute thebody, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart. Bring it! Iam weary, I would rest."
Chapter V
The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting.She said:
"I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. It was ignorant, buttrusted me, asking me to choose for it. You did not ask me to choose."
"Oh, miserable me! What is left for me?"
"What not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of Old Age."
