Everychild | Page 7

envy you and hate you; and if you sought to relieve their distress they
would hate you more than ever in their hearts, because you would have
degraded them. You would have to be a spendthrift, which is vulgar, or
you would have to be a miser, which is mean. There is an old saying in
Chinese . . . how shall I put it in your language? Runnings fleet,
unhampered feet. You see? The rich have pampered feet. At best they
tread soft places. No, it is an evil thing to have too much. I would that
the lamp had never been mine."
"If it were mine," said Everychild, unconvinced, "I think I should be
happy."
"To be happy," said Aladdin, "means to want something and believe
you are going to get it after awhile. But when you've got everything it
is a good deal worse than not having anything. Because there's nothing
left for you to wish for. And wishing for things is really the greatest
pleasure in the world."
"But to wish for things, and never to get them?" said Everychild,
deeply puzzled.

"Let me explain," said Aladdin. "I remember when I was a little boy in
Peking there came a spring when I wanted a kite. Oh, how I longed for
a kite! And my mother said, 'Never mind, Aladdin. When your uncle
comes back from Arabia, where he has gone with the camel train,
perhaps he will bring you a kite!' And I was very happy all the spring
and summer, thinking I should have a kite when my uncle came back
from the camel train. And it was not until the next year, when I no
longer cared very much about having a kite, that I learned how my
uncle had died in the desert, quite early in the spring the year before."
"And then," asked Everychild, "were you not unhappy?"
"No. You see, by that time I had begun to wish for something else. This
time it was a pair of little doves which a merchant had brought from far
away in the Himalaya mountains. And I dreamed by day and night of
the time when I should own the little doves. No coin was too small to
be saved. The little coins would become as much as a yen in time. And
at last I was the proud possessor of a yen!"
"And then you got the little doves?"
"No. By that time I cared more for the yen than for the little doves--and
besides, the doves had died."
"But with the--the yen, you could buy something else you wanted,"
suggested Everychild.
"Not so. By that time I coveted some ivory chessmen, worth many yen.
And I was very happy, planning how some day I should become rich
enough to buy the ivory chessmen."
"But if you only kept on wishing for things," murmured Everychild,
"and never got them, you'd of course become very unhappy some day!"
But Aladdin slowly shook his head. "I cannot tell how it may be," he
said. "But my poor mother was always happy, and she never really got
what she wished for, unless it was the last thing of all."

"And that?" inquired Everychild.
"One thing led to another, in her case; and the last thing she wished for
was heaven. And then she died."
A great wind roared through the forest and died away in a sigh.
Presently Aladdin spoke again: "And another great trouble about
getting what you wish for is that in most cases when you get a thing
you find that you didn't really want it, after all. It proves to be not quite
what you thought it; or else it came too late."
This statement was completed in so mournful a tone that Everychild
felt constrained to say, "Why shouldn't you throw the lamp away, if it
makes you unhappy?"
"It isn't possible," was Aladdin's rejoinder. "There is only one way in
which I can be rid of it, and I haven't been able to find that way as yet."
Everychild was so greatly puzzled by this statement that Aladdin
explained: "I can never be rid of the lamp save on one condition. When
I have wished for the best thing of all the lamp will disappear and I
may rejoice in the thought that it will never be mine again."
"The best thing of all?" mused Everychild.
"You see how difficult it is. Who can tell what is the best thing of all?
And so I must go on owning the lamp and being unhappy."
But Everychild found much of this simply bewildering. "Just the
same," he said after a pause, "it must be very nice to have a lamp to rub,
so that you may have so many things you really