Stories From The Old Attic, Robert Harris [top ten books of all time .txt] 📗

so lazy, you’d shovel some of that gravel off your driveway and back onto the road where it belongs,” the driver sneered as he drove away, spinning his tires and scattering gravel in every direction.

 

A Good Horse and a Better

A man once came upon a lad about midday skipping stones across a pond. “Hello, young man,” he said, approaching. “What brings you here on a school day?”

“I wrote a poem yesterday which was the best in class, and the teacher said I could play today while the other children wrote more poems.”

“Well, then, you are to be congratulated. Yours is certainly a deed of distinction. And as a reward,” he added, settling himself on a tree stump, “let me tell you a story about two horses.”

“Oh, yes, do,” the youth said eagerly, sitting down at the man’s feet.

“The first horse lived in Arabia, and he was beautiful and strong. He had never lost a race. And he was shrewd. He would run just hard enough to pull away from the other horses in the race, and then he would let up and trot, or even walk, across the finish line, to the great embarrassment and humiliation of all the other horses.”

“He was clearly a superior animal,” the young poet interjected.

“Yes, he was,” agreed the man. “Now the other horse lived in Macedonia, and he, too, was strong and noble. He had, however, lost one race, the first race of his life; and some say he always remembered that when he ran.”

“How grating to the heart it must be to lose so early and have a blight on one’s reputation,” mused the young man.

“But this horse always won every other race. And unlike our first horse, when this Macedonian horse ran and knew he had beaten the other horses, instead of letting up he redoubled his efforts and ran even harder—as hard as he could—for he now ran not against the fortuitous competitors with whom he began the race, but against his own heart: against all horses past and all horses future, against every horse in Macedonia and every one in Arabia, and also against the ideal horse with a pace so frighteningly fast that few can conceive its possibility. And even more than this, he ran toward the perfection of excellence itself. And when he crossed the finish line, as happy as he was to win, he secretly lamented that his opponents had not been fast enough to threaten him and push him onward.”

“Even though he lost once,” the lad remarked after a short silence, “perhaps this horse was as good as the Arabian.”

“Perhaps so, my child,” said the man, with a smile. “Perhaps so.”

 

It’s Nut Valuable

Once upon a time a wise and thoughtful craftsman made a new electric adding machine. It was very complex with many gears and levers and wheels, and it did amazing things, always adding up the numbers correctly. So the craftsman sold it to a businessman for many thousands of dollars. All the parts inside the new adding machine felt good about being so valuable. They worked hard and happily all day, and often talked about how useful they were to the businessman.

But one day a spring noticed a little nut just sitting on the end of a shaft. The spring pulled at the lever he was attached to and pointed. Soon the whole works knew. “You lazy little nut,” said a spinning gear, “why don’t you get to work?”

“But I am working,” said the nut. “Holding on is my job.”

“That’s stupid,” yelled a cam. “I don’t believe our maker put you here. You just sneaked in to steal some of our glory. Why don’t you get out?”

“Well,” said the nut, “I’m sure our maker knew what he was doing, and that I do serve a purpose. I hold on as tightly as I can.” But all the machinery began to squeal and abuse the nut so violently that he felt very sad and began to doubt himself. “Maybe I am useless,” he thought. He appealed to the shaft he was threaded onto.

“Look, kid,” the shaft told him, “I’ve got plenty of other parts holding on to me. I shouldn’t have to support you, too.”

So finally the little nut decided to unscrew himself and go away. He dropped off the shaft and fell through a hole in the bottom of the machine. “Good riddance,” said the motor.

“Yeah, good riddance,” all the other parts agreed.

Rather quickly the nut was forgotten and things went on as they had for awhile. But in a few hours, the shaft began to feel funny. At first he began to vibrate. Then he started sliding and slipping. He called for help to the other parts attached to him, but they could do nothing. Presently the shaft fell completely out of his mounting hole, causing many levers and gears and cams to slip out of alignment and crash against each other, and forcing the whole machine to grind to a halt with an awful noise. The motor tried his best to keep things going—he tried so hard that he bent many of the parts—and then as he tried even harder, he burned himself out. “This is all the fault of that little nut,” the ruined parts all agreed.

“I’ll give ya three bucks for it,” said the junk man to the office manager.

 

Stewardship

A wise man approached three young men standing around idly. “Here is a coin worth a hundred dollars,” the wise man said to the first youth. “What should I do with it?”

“Give it to me,” he said at once.

“Rather than reward such selfishness and greed,” responded the wise man, “it would be better to throw the money into the sea.” And with this, the wise man threw the coin into the water. “Now,” he said to the second youth, “here is another coin. What should I do with it?”

The second youth, feeling shrewd, answered, “Throw it into the sea.”

But the wise man said, “That would be a careless waste. To follow a bad example only because it is an example is folly. Better than throwing this money away would be to give it to the poor.” And he gave the money to a beggar sitting nearby. “I have one last coin,” the wise man went on, talking to the third youth. “What shall I do with it?”

The third youth had been paying attention, and, thinking he would get the money if he avoided the greed and wastefulness implied in the answers of his friends, said, “Why, give it to the poor.”

“That is a very wise and kind answer,” said the wise man, smiling. And because you have answered so well” (at this the youth brightened with expectation), “I will indeed take your good advice and give the money to the poor.”

“Don’t I get anything for my wisdom?” demanded the youth.

“You have already received something much better than money,” said the wise man.

 

The Man Who Believed in Miracles

Once upon a time a traveler arrived in a land quite like our own, full of modern technology like cars and computers and whistling teapots, but with these two differences: there were no television sets and no airplanes. In fact, nothing at all had ever been seen in the sky, not even a bird, and the only movies the people ever saw were in the theaters.

The traveler stayed for about a month on the eastern shore where he had arrived, and then decided to visit the western cities. He mentioned his decision one evening at a meeting of the principal scientists and educators of the region, who had gathered to hear of his travels. Someone mentioned that the west had much to offer, but that the journey between the two areas was unpleasant, consisting of crossing a hot, empty desert. “In that case,” said the traveler, “I’ll just fly.”

“Is that like sleep?” one of the scientists asked.

“No, no,” the traveler replied. “You know, fly through the air, like a bird.”

“And what is a bird?” someone asked. And so the traveler began to explain about flight and what an airplane was and how it flew from one place to another. The room became very quiet, and the expressions on the faces of everyone present darkened.

“Does he expect us to believe this?” one man whispered to another.

“Well, you know what liars travelers are,” someone else added. Finally the host spoke up, slightly embarrassed and slightly indignant.

“If this is your idea of a joke,” he began, but was interrupted by the surprised traveler.

“Why, it’s no joke at all. People fly all the time.”

“I am sorry that you so much underestimate the intelligence and learning of your audience,” said a professor across the table. “That a person could enter some metal device—like a car with fins—and rise into the air, and be sustained there, and move forward, why that clearly violates everything we know about the law of gravity and the laws of physics. If we have learned anything from a thousand years of study of the natural world, it is that an object heavier than air must return immediately to earth when it is tossed into the sky.”

“Hear, hear,” two or three people muttered.

“Now, if you perhaps mean that these ‘airplanes,’ as you call them, are somehow flung into the air for a short distance and then fall to the ground, well, then perhaps that would be possible.” The professor looked expectantly and a bit condescendingly at the traveler, hoping that the man would take this face-saving opportunity.

“No, no. You don’t understand,” said the traveler. “The airplanes have powerful motors and the craft rise into the air, and they stay up as long as they want, as long as the fuel holds out.” There were several audible “hmmphs” around the room.

“Tell us then,” said another scholar, in a saccharine voice, “how this device works. What makes it fly?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly how it works. It has something to do with air flowing over the wings.”

“You don’t know—you cannot explain—how it works, this device that runs counter to everything we know about the natural world, yet you believe in it anyway.”

“Believe in it?” asked the traveler, a bit confused by this turn of phrase. “Of course I ‘believe in it.’ I fly on one all the time at home.”

“And how do you control its motions?” a man asked, without removing his pipe. The audience was clearly beginning to patronize the traveler, and he was growing a little irritated.

“Oh, I don’t control it. There’s a pilot for that.”

“I see,” the pipe smoker said. “So this airplane contains both you and the pilot. You’re telling us that perhaps four or five hundred pounds of dead weight can travel through the air as long as it wants.”

“As long as the fuel holds out,” added one of the hmmphers, with amusement.

“And all the time sneering at the law of gravity and laughing science in the face,” someone else noted.

“Well, actually, the planes are much larger than that,” said the traveler. “Many of them hold two or three hundred people and weigh, my, I don’t know—many thousands of pounds.”

“I think we have heard enough,” the now-fully-embarrassed and half-angered host said. “It was amusing for awhile, but it’s time to put an end to this nonsense.”

“It is not nonsense,” the traveler protested. “It is the truth.”

“Then you really believe this madman’s drivel you’ve been feeding us?” the host asked, rather hotly.

“Of course. How can I not believe it? I see it and live it every day. And here,” he added, remembering something, “I even have a photograph.”

“Obviously faked,” said the host, dismissing it after a glance.

“Who