The Junior Classics, Volume 1: Fairy and wonder tales
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 1: Fairy and wonder tales
Children's literature
The Cock answered the Dog, “And let him die since he is such a fool. I
have a hundred wives, and I call them all together whenever I find a
grain of corn, and as soon as they have come round me, I swallow it
myself. And if any one of them got angry, I should be at her directly
with my beak. The master has only one wife, and he cannot even manage
her.”
When the husband heard this he quickly sprang out of the coffin, took
up a stick, and called his wife into the room.
“Come, wife,” he said, “I will tell you what you so much want to hear.”
Then as he beat her with the stick he cried, “This is it, wife! This is
it.”
In this way he quieted his wife, and she never asked him again what he
had been laughing at.
THE EMPEROR TROJAN’S GOAT’S EARS
By W. S. Karajich
There once lived an emperor whose name was Trojan. This emperor had
goat’s ears, and he used to call in barber after barber to shave him.
But whoever went in never came out again; for while the barber was
shaving him, the emperor would ask what he observed uncommon in him,
and when the barber would answer that he observed his goat’s ears, the
Emperor would immediately cut him into pieces.
At last it came to the turn of a certain barber to go who feigned
illness, and sent his apprentice instead. When the apprentice appeared
before the emperor he was asked why his master did not come, and he
answered, “Because he is ill.” Then the emperor sat down, and allowed
the youth to shave him.
As he shaved him the apprentice noticed the emperor’s goat’s ears, but
when Trojan asked him what he had observed, he answered, “I have
observed nothing.”
Then the emperor gave him twelve ducats, and said to him—
“From this time forth you shall always come and shave me.
When the apprentice came home, his master asked him how he got on at
the emperor’s, and the youth answered—
“All well; and the emperor has told me that I am to shave him in
future.”
Then he showed the twelve ducats he had received; but as to the
emperor’s goat’s ears, of that he said nothing.
From this time forth the apprentice went regularly to Trojan to shave
him, and for each shaving he received twelve ducats; but he told no one
that the emperor had goat’s ears.
At last it began to worry and torment him that he dare tell no one his
secret; and he became sick and began to pine away. His master, who
could not fail to observe this, asked him what ailed him, and after
much pressing the apprentice confessed that he had something on his
heart which he dared not confide to anyone, and he added, “If I could
only tell it to somebody, I should feel better at once.”
Then said the master—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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