AN INDIAN STORY

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 65, 17 March 1900, Page 5 (Supplement)

AN INDIAN STORY

There is an Eastern story which has its version in many languages, of a beautiful damsel to whom a genius of surpassing power desired to give a talisman. He enjoined her to take herself across a field of standing corn; she was to plucK the tallest and the largest ear she could find, but she was to gather it as she went forward and never to pause in her path, or to step backward in quest of her object. In proportion to the size and ripeness of the ear she gathered so would be its power as a talisman. She went out upon her quest, says the legend, and entered upon the Held. Many a tall stalk of surpassing excellence met her glance, but still she walked onward, expecting always to find some one more excellent still. At last she reached a portion of the fields where the crops were thinner and the ears more stunted. She regretted the tall and graceful stalks she had left behind, but disdained to plcK those which fell so far below what her ideas wore of a perfect ear. But, alas, the stems grew still more ragged and more scanty as she trod onward; on the margin of the field they were rank and mildewed, and when she had accomplished her walk through the waving grain she emerged on the other side without having gathered any ear whatever. The genius rebuked her for her folly, but we are told that he gave her an opportunity of retrieving her error. We may apply this mystic little Indian fable: to the realities of daily life.