My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh People — John Shaqi
My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh PeopleEvans, Caradoc
General
My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh People
Evans, Caradoc
Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"But we must do more. I must do more. And you must help me. We must
stand together. Slander never creates; it shackles and kills. We must be
solid. Midway off the Cardigan coast--in beautiful Morfa--there is a
rock--Birds' Rock. As a boy I used to climb to the top of it, and watch
the waters swirling and tumbling about it, and around it and against it.
But I was unafraid. For I knew that the rock was old when man was young,
and that it had braved all the washings of the sea."
The men congratulated Ben; and Ben came home and he stood at a mirror,
and shaping his body put out his arms.
"How's this for my maiden speech in the house?" he asked his wife.
Presently he paused. "You're a fine one to be an M.P.'s lady," he said.
"You stout, underworked fool."
Ben urged on his imaginings: he advised his monarch, and to him for
favors merchants brought their gold, and mothers their daughters. Winter
and spring moved, and then his mind brought his enemies to his door.
"As the root of a tree spreads in the bosom of the earth," he said, "so
my fame shall spread over the world"; and he built a fence about his
house.
But his mind would not be stilled. Every midnight his enemies were at
the fence, and he could not sleep for the dreadful outcry; every
midnight he arose from his bed and walked aside the fence, testing the
strength of it with a hand and a shoulder and shooing away his enemies
as one does a brood of chickens from a cornfield.
His fortieth summer ran out--a season of short days and nights speeding
on the heels of night. Then peace fell upon him; and at dusk of a day he
came into his room, and he saw one sitting in a chair. He went up to the
chair and knelt on a knee, and said: "Your Majesty...."
III
THE TWO APOSTLES
God covered sun, moon, and stars, stilled the growing things of the
earth and dried up the waters on the face of the earth, and stopped the
roll of the world; and He fixed upon a measure of time in which to judge
the peoples, this being the measure which was spoken of as the Day of
Judgment.
In the meanseason He summoned Satan to the Judgment Hall, which is at
the side of the river that breaks into four heads, and above which, its
pulpits stretching beyond the sky, is the Palace of White Shirts, and
below which, in deep darknesses, are the frightful regions of the Fiery
Oven. "Give an account of your rule in the face of those whom you
provoked to mischief," He said to Satan. "My balance hitched to a beam
will weigh the good and evil of my children, and if good is heavier
than evil, I shall lighten your countenance and clothe you with the
robes of angels."
"Awake the dead" He bade the Trumpeter, and "Lift the lids off the
burying-places" He bade the laborers. In their generations were they
called; "for," said the Lord, "good and evil are customs of a period and
when the period is passed and the next is come, good may be evil and
evil may be good."
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