Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know | Page 8

"My son," replied his mother, "though you are a man, you have as yet
no wife. Your virtues of obedience, filial reverence, fidelity, and
politeness have made you well known. Hence this fair damsel is not
unwilling to become your wife. But, without your consent, I could not
answer her proposal. What do you think about it?"
The young farmer, though highly complimented, at first said little, but

he thought hard. "Daintily reared, and perhaps of noble birth is she, but
should I gratify her desire, how can she bear the poverty to which we
are accustomed? Will she be patient, when she has to suffer hunger? Or,
shall we be separated, and that which promises love and happiness last
only a little while, to pass away, leaving gloom and sorrow behind?"
But as the days slipped along, and when he saw how kind she was to
her new mother, ever patient and self-denying in loving reverence, all
his fears were driven away like clouds before the wind. So the young
man and woman were married.
But when the full autumn-time came for the rice ears to fill and round
out, nothing was found but husk and shell. The crop was a total failure.
With heavy taxes unpaid and no food in the house, starvation loomed
before them. By winter, all were in dire distress.
Then the patient wife revealed new powers and cheered her husband,
saying,
"I can spin such cloth as was never made in this province, if you will
build me a separate room. I cannot weave here, or make the fine pattern
of red and white except when alone and in perfect silence. Build me a
room, and the money you need will flow in."
The old mother was doubtful as to her daughter-in-law's project and
even Musai was but half-hearted. Yet he went to work diligently. With
beam, and wattle, and thatch, floor of mats and window of latticed
paper, with walls made tight because well daubed with clay, he built
the room apart. There alone, day by day, secluded from all, the sweet
wife toiled unseen. The mother and husband patiently waited, until
after a week, the little woman rejoined the family circle. In her hands
she bore a roll of woven stuff, white and shining, as lustrous and pure
as fresh fallen snow. Yet here and there, a crimson thread in the stuff
did but intensify the purity of the otherwise unflecked whiteness. Pure
red and pure white were the only colours of this wonderful fabric.
"What shall we call it?" inquired the amazed husband.

"It has no name, for there is none other in the world like it," said the
fair weaver.
"But I must have a name. I shall take it to the Daimio. He will not buy,
if he does not know how it is called."
"Then," said the wife, "tell him its name is 'White Crane's-down cloth.'"
Quickly passed the snowy fabric into the hands of the lord of the castle,
who sent it as a present to the Empress in Kioto. All were amazed by it,
and the Empress commanded the donor to be richly rewarded. The
farmer husband, bearing a thousand pieces of coin in his bag, hastened
home to spread the shining silver at his mother's feet and to thank the
wife who had brought him fortune. A feast followed, and for many
weeks the family lived easily on the money thus gained. Then, when
again on the edge of need, Musai asked his wife if she were willing to
weave another web of the wonderful Crane's-down cloth.
Cheerfully she agreed, cautioning him to leave her in privacy, and not
to look upon her until she came forth with the cloth.
But alas for the spirit of prying impertinence and wicked curiosity! Not
satisfied with having been delivered from starvation by a wife that
served him like a slave, Musai stealthily crept up to the paper partition,
touched his tongue to the latticed pane, and poked his finger noiselessly
through, thus making a round hole to which he glued his eye and
looked in.
What a sight! There was no woman at work, but a noble white
crane--the same that he had seen in the field, and from whose back he
had extracted the hunter's arrow. Bending over the spinning wheel, the
bird pulled from her own breast the silky down, and by twining and
twisting made it into the finest thread which mortals ever beheld. From
time to time, she pressed from her heart's blood red drops with which to
dye some strands, and thus the weaving went on. The web of the cloth
was nearly finished.
Musai astounded looked on without moving, until suddenly called by

his mother, he cried out in response, "Yes, I'm coming."
The