adventure.
When the farmer was old, and felt that his time had come to die, he
called the three sons to him and said, "My sons, there is a pot of gold
hidden in the olive orchard. Dig for it, if you wish it."
The sons tried to get him to tell them in what part of the orchard the
gold was hidden; but he would tell them nothing more.
After the farmer was dead, the sons went to work to find the pot of
gold; since they did not know where the hiding-place was, they agreed to
begin in a line, at one end of the orchard, and to dig until one of them
should find the money.
They dug until they had turned up the soil from one end of the orchard
to the other, round the tree-roots and between them. But no pot of gold
was to be found. It seemed as if some one must have stolen it, or as if
the farmer had been wandering in his wits. The three sons were bitterly
disappointed to have all their work for nothing.
The next olive season, the olive trees in the orchard bore more fruit
than they had ever given before; the fine cultivating they had had from
the digging brought so much fruit, and of so fine a quality, that when
it was sold it gave the sons a whole pot of gold!
And when they saw how much money had come from the orchard, they
suddenly understood what the wise father had meant when he said, "There
is gold hidden in the orchard; dig for it."
FOOTNOTES:
[31] An Italian folk tale.
MARGARET OF NEW ORLEANS
If you ever go to the beautiful city of New Orleans, somebody will be
sure to take you down into the old business part of the city, where
there are banks and shops and hotels, and show you a statue which stands
in a little square there. It is the statue of a woman, sitting in a low
chair, with her arms around a child, who leans against her. The woman is
not at all pretty: she wears thick, common shoes, a plain dress, with a
little shawl, and a sun-bonnet; she is stout and short, and her face is
a square-chinned Irish face; but her eyes look at you like your
mother's.
Now there is something very surprising about this statue: it was the
first one that was ever made in America in honour of a woman. Even in
Europe there are not many monuments to women, and most of the few are to
great queens or princesses, very beautiful and very richly dressed. You
see, this statue in New Orleans is not quite like anything else.
It is the statue of a woman named Margaret. Her whole name was Margaret
Haughery, but no one
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