DP Tool Club 19/CD_ASCQ_19_010295.iso/vrac/etext10.zip/AESOP8.TXT

Text File | 1994-11-08 | 2KB | 31 lines

8|Mercury and the Workmen|FORE=11|BACK=1|MARG=5|SCFX=8


                       Mercury and the Workmen^15


A workman, felling wood by the side  of a river, let his axe drop  - by
accident into a  deep pool.   Being thus deprived  of the means  of his
livelihood,  he  sat  down  on  the  bank  and  lamented his hard fate.
Mercury appeared and demanded  the cause of his  tears.  After he  told
him his misfortune, Mercury plunged  into the stream, and, bringing  up
a golden  axe, inquired  if that  were the  one he  had lost.   On  his
saying that  it was  not his,  Mercury disappeared  beneath the water a
second time, returned with  a silver axe in  his hand, and again  asked
the Workman  if it  were his.   When the  Workman said  it was  not, he
dived into the pool for the third time and brought up the axe that  had
been  lost.   The  Workman  claimed  it  and  expressed  his joy at its
recovery.  Mercury, pleased with  his honesty, gave him the  golden and
silver axes in addition to his own.  The Workman, on his return to  his
house, related to his  companions all that had  happened.  One of  them
at once resolved to try and  secure the same good fortune for  himself.
He ran to the river and threw  his axe on purpose into the pool  at the
same place, and sat down on the bank to weep.  Mercury appeared to  him
just as he hoped he would;  and having learned the cause of  his grief,
plunged into the stream  and brought up a  golden axe, inquiring if  he
had lost it.  The Workman  seized it greedily, and declared that  truly
it was the very same axe that he had lost.  Mercury, displeased at  his
knavery, not only took away the golden axe, but refused to recover  for
him the axe he had thrown into the pool.