Life

In the morning of my life, when I had to start my heartbeat in my mother’s womb, a good fairy came with her basket and told me:

"Here are gifts. Take one, leave the others. And be wary, chose wisely!”

The gifts were five: Fame, Love, Richness, Pleasure and Death.

I said, eagerly: "There is no need to consider"; and I chose ‘Pleasure’!

I came out into the world and sought out the pleasures that anyone can delight in. Much pleasures from good family, good bringing up and good education, but each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing, vain and empty; and I wanted to get more and keep with me forever, but each departed away, mocking me.

In the end I said: "These years I have wasted. If I could but choose again, I would choose wisely.

The fairy appeared, and said:

"Four of the gifts remain. Choose once more, but remember-- time is flying, and only one of them is precious."

I considered long, then chose Love.

“This is the only one which was missing in my life” I said, but did not mark the tears that rose in the Fairy's eyes.

I had to fight to get my Love! At last I got him, but he vanished within the blink of eyes. I completely lost my trust on Love. And I communed with myself, saying: "Desolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour of happiness the treacherous trader, Love, as sold me I have paid a thousand hours of grief.”

"Choose again." It was the Fairy speaking.

"The years have taught you wisdom--surely it must be so. Three gifts remain. Only one of them has any worth--remember it, and choose warily."

I reflected long, then chose Fame; and the Fairy, sighing, went her way.

Years went by and Fairy came again, and stood behind me where I was sitting solitary in the fading day, thinking. And she knew my thought:

"My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it seemed well with me for a little while. How little a while it was! Then came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate; then persecution. Then derision, which is the beginning of the end. And last of all came pity , which is the funeral of fame. Then, the bitterness and misery of renown, targeted for contempt and compassion and took in its way to decay."

"Chose yet again." It was the Fairy’s voice.

"Two gifts remain. And do not despair. In the beginning there was but one that was precious, and it is still here."

"Wealth--which is power! How blind I was!" I said. "Now, at last, life will be worth the living. I will spend, squander, dazzle. These mockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and I will feed my hungry heart with their envy. I will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit, all contentment of the body that man holds dear. I will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinch-beck 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; I was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so."

Three short years went by, and a day came when I was sitting shivering in a mean garret; and I was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags; and I was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:

"Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! And miscalled, every one. They are not gifts, but merely lendings. Pleasure, Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for lasting realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty. The fairy said true; in all her store there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was not valueless. 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 the body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart.

Bring it! I am weary, I would rest."

The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting. "I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. It was ignorant, but trusted me, asking me to choose for it. You did not ask me to choose" she said.

"Oh, miserable me! What is left for me?"

"What not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of Old Age."