Neighbors: Life Stories Of The Other Half Part 8

"It is long since, Lord," she sobbed, "and it is lost."

"Not so; witness of the one unselfish deed of your life, it could not perish. Go," said the Lord to an angel, "find the carrot and bring it here."

The angel brought the carrot and held it over the bottomless pit, letting it down till it was within reach of the woman. "Cling to it," he said. She did as she was bidden, and found herself rising out of her misery.

Now, when the other souls in torment saw her drawn upward, they seized her hands, her waist, her feet, her garments, and clung to them with despairing cries, so that there rose out of the pit an ever-lengthening chain of writhing, wailing humanity clinging to the frail root. Higher and higher it rose till it was half-way to heaven, and still its burden grew.

The woman looked down, and fear and anger seized her--fear that the carrot would break, and anger at the meddling of those strangers who put her in peril. She struggled, and beat with hands and feet upon those below her.

"Let go," she cried; "it is _my_ carrot."

The words were hardly out of her mouth before the carrot broke, and she fell, with them all, back into torment, and the pit swallowed them up.

In a little German town the pious Rabbi Jisroel Isserlheim is deep in the study of the sacred writings, when of a sudden the Messiah stands before him. The time of trial of his people is past, so runs his message; that very evening he will come, and their sufferings will be over. He prays that his host will summon a carriage in which he may make his entry into town. Trembling with pride and joy, the rabbi falls at his feet and wors.h.i.+ps. But in the very act of rising doubts a.s.sail him.

"Thou temptest me, Master!" he exclaims; "it is written that the Messiah shall come riding upon an a.s.s."

"Be it so. Send thou for the a.s.s." But in all the countryside far and near no a.s.s is to be found; the rabbi knows it. The Messiah waits.

"Do you not see that you are barring the way with your scruples to the salvation you long for? The sun is far in the west; do not let it set, for if this day pa.s.s, the Jews must suffer for untold ages to come. Would you set an a.s.s between me and the salvation of my people?"

The man stands irresolute. "Ten minutes, and I must go," urges his visitor. But at last the rabbi has seen his duty clear.

"No Messiah without the a.s.s," he cries; and the Messiah goes on his way.

Once, so runs the legend, there lived in far Judean hills two affectionate brothers, tilling a common field together. One had a wife and a houseful of children; the other was a lonely man. One night in the harvest time the older brother said to his wife: "My brother is a lonely man. I will go out and move some of the sheaves from my side of the field over on his, so that when he sees them in the morning his heart will be cheered by the abundance." And he did.

That same night the other brother said to his workmen: "My brother has a houseful and many mouths to fill. I am alone, and do not need all this wealth. I will go and move some of my sheaves over on his field, so that he shall rejoice in the morning when he sees how great is his store." And he did. They did it that night and the next, in the sheltering dark. But on the third night the moon came out as they met face to face, each with his arms filled with sheaves. On that spot, says the legend, was built the Temple of Jerusalem, for it was esteemed that there earth came nearest heaven.

THE STRAND FROM ABOVE

From the Danish of JOHANNES JoRGENSEN

The sun rose on a bright September morning. A thousand gems of dew sparkled in the meadows, and upon the breeze floated, in the wake of summer, the s.h.i.+ning silken strands of which no man knoweth the whence or the whither.

One of them caught in the top of a tree, and the skipper, a little speckled yellow spider, quit his airs.h.i.+p to survey the leafy demesne there. It was not to his liking, and, with prompt decision, he spun a new strand and let himself down straight into the hedge below.

There were twigs and shoots in plenty there to spin a web in, and he went to work at once, letting the strand from above, by which he had come, bear the upper corner of it.

A fine large web it was when finished, and with this about it that set it off from all the other webs thereabouts, that it seemed to stand straight up in the air, without anything to show what held it. It takes pretty sharp eyes to make out a single strand of a spider-web, even a very little way off.

The days went by. Flies grew scarcer, as the sun rose later, and the spider had to make his net larger that it might reach farther and catch more. And here the strand from above turned out a great help. With it to brace the structure, the web was spun higher and wider, until it covered the hedge all the way across. In the wet October mornings, when it hung full of s.h.i.+mmering raindrops, it was like a veil st.i.tched with precious pearls.

The spider was proud of his work. No longer the little thing that had come drifting out of the vast with nothing but its unspun web in its pocket, so to speak, he was now a big, portly, opulent spider, with the largest web in the hedge.

One morning he awoke very much out of sorts. There had been a frost in the night, and daylight brought no sun. The sky was overcast; not a fly was out. All the long gray autumn day the spider sat hungry and cross in his corner. Toward evening, to kill time, he started on a tour of inspection, to see if anything needed bracing or mending. He pulled at all the strands; they were firm enough. But though he found nothing wrong, his temper did not improve; he waxed crosser than ever.

At the farthest end of the web he came at last to a strand that all at once seemed strange to him. All the rest went this way or that--the spider knew every stick and k.n.o.b they were made fast to, every one. But this preposterous strand went nowhere--that is to say, went straight up in the air and was lost. He stood up on his hind legs and stared with all his eyes, but he could not make it out. To look at, the strand went right up into the clouds, which was nonsense.

The longer he sat and glared to no purpose, the angrier the spider grew.

He had quite forgotten how on a bright September morning he himself had come down this same strand. And he had forgotten how, in the building of the web and afterward when it had to be enlarged, it was just this strand he had depended upon. He saw only that here was a useless strand, a fool strand, that went nowhere in sense or reason, only up in the air where solid spiders had no concern....

"Away with it!" and with one vicious snap of his angry jaws he bit the strand in two.

That instant the web collapsed, the whole proud and prosperous structure fell in a heap, and when the spider came to he lay sprawling in the hedge with the web all about his head like a wet rag. In one brief moment he had wrecked it all--because he did not understand the use of _the strand from above_.