ly she was not a statue any longer.

After that they were married, and Selim the Fisherman and the enchanted
statue became king and queen in real earnest.

I think Selim the Fisherman sent for Selim the Baker and made him rich
and happy--I hope he did--I am sure he did.

So, after all, it is not always the lucky one who gathers the plums when
wisdom is by to pick up what the other shakes down.

I could say more; for, O little children! little children! there is
more than meat in many an egg-shell; and many a fool tells a story that
joggles a wise man's wits, and many a man dances and junkets in his
fool's paradise till it comes tumbling down about his ears some day; and
there are few men who are like Selim the Fisherman, who wear the Ring of
Wisdom on their finger, and, alack-a-day! I am not one of them, and that
is the end of this story.

Old Bidpai nodded his head. "Aye, aye," said he, "there is a very good
moral in that story, my friend. It is, as a certain philosopher said,
very true, that there is more in an egg than the meat. And truly,
methinks, there is more in thy story than the story of itself." He
nodded his head again and stroked his beard slowly, puffing out as he
did so as a great reflective cloud of smoke, through which his eyes
shone and twinkled mistily like stars through a cloud.

"And whose turn is it now?" said Doctor Faustus.

"Methinks tis mine," said Boots--he who in fairy-tale always sat in the
ashes at home and yet married a princess after he had gone out into the
world awhile. "My story," said he, "hath no moral, but, all the same, it
is as true as that eggs hatch chickens." Then, without waiting for any
one to say another word, he began it in these words. "I am going to tell
you," said he, how--

All Things are as Fate wills.

Once upon a time, in the old, old days, there lived a king who had a
head upon his shoulders wiser than other folk, and this was why: though
he was richer and wiser and greater than most kings, and had all that he
wanted and more into the bargain, he was so afraid of becoming proud of
his own prosperity that he had these words written in letters of gold
upon the walls of each and every room in his palace:

All Things are as Fate wills.

Now, by-and-by and after a while the king died; for when his time comes,
even the rich and the wise man must die, as well as the poor and the
simple man. So the king's son came, in turn, to be king of that land;
a