The Fable of a Certain King Who
Sought a New Pleasure

(by Bruce Barton, 1886-1967)

NOW, in a great country there lived a certain King who ruled over vast possessions.

       He had one daughter, a beautiful princess.

       And behold, though the King possessed everything that money could buy, — houses and lands and cattle and automobiles, and servants, — he was weary of life. For he said, There is no pleasure in it.

       And he wrote a proclamation, and caused it to be published in his dominions, that whoever would invent a new pleasure for his amusement should receive the hand of his daughter in marriage.

       Thereupon appeared a young man who bowed low and said: "O King, live forever. I have invented a new pleasure; but to enjoy it you must do precisely as I say."

       Whereupon the King's heart was very glad. He smiled upon the young man and promised.

       The next morning the young man was early at the palace, and had the King out of bed before daybreak, and the princess and all the little princes.

       Together they journeyed a long way by foot and street-car into the country. They saw a wonderful sight in the sky, and the young man explained to the King that it was called a sunrise. They passed brooks, and the princes took off their shoes and stockings and waded in them. They wandered through cool woods and picked flowers.

       Finally, at about the middle of the day, the King said: "I have a strange feeling under my belt which I have never felt before." And the young man answered have never had it because you never got enough fresh air into your system before to create it."

       And the little princes, too, began to cry out that they also had queer feelings under their belts.

       Whereupon the young man produced a large basket covered with a white cloth, and opened it. And, behold, there were sandwiches, and fruits, and olives, and cold chicken, and coffee in a tin bucket, and cake, and divers other foods, all daintily packed.

       And the King could not restrain his hand, but dove in and ate for half an hour or more; and then lay under the trees and looked up at the sky and smoked.

       And the princes raced about the woods and played Indian, and no one watched over them nor bade them nay; for there was nothing they could possibly harm.

       And toward nightfall they journeyed back to the palace; and the little princes, who had always to be pampered and read to at night to get them to sleep, fell asleep on their beds with their clothes on. And the King, having had a bath and a rub-down, settled back on the royal piazza with a 50-cent cigar in his mouth, and smiled for the first time in months, and called for the young man.

       And the young man appeared and said: "Your Majesty, it was some day, was it not?" And the King admitted it was.

       "Thou hast made good," saith the King, "and my daughter, the beautiful princess, is inside at the piano. But, first give me the bill for this wonderful new pleasure; for I will pay for it."

       And the young man handed him a bill for one dollar and twenty-three cents.

       Whereupon the King was exceeding a wroth, and cried out: "Dost think I am a cheap skate? Is a pleasure that costs only one dollar twenty-three fit for a King?"

       And he called the Captain of the Guard and ordered that the young man should be shot at sunrise.
 

       Moral: You and I have some peachy times, when we were kids, on those old picnics with sandwiches that the ants crawled over and coffee full of pine needles. But we wouldn't dare take our kids on a picnic — perish the thought. The neighbors would think we are cheap skates.

       Pack up the dinner-coat, mother. We're off to Atlantic City with the year's savings.

Bruce Barton, Editor.       

(THE END)