Chestnuts and An Old Story 



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CERTAIN little chap 

 that I know very well, 

 has a way of climbing 

 up into his father's 

 lap and putting this 

 question: "Say, 

 father, once-upon-a- 

 time- -what?" This 

 poser is handed out 

 when the small boy 

 is likely to be tired 

 or sleepy, and about ready for bed. 

 Sometimes the old " once-upon-a-times" 

 will do, but very often the start of 

 such a one will bring a strong and firm 

 reminder that the " Three Bears," or 

 " Hop-o'-My-Thumb," or "Jack the 

 Giant Killer " won't fill the bill. 



So the father has to search around in 

 his memory for a tale that will pass. Very 

 often, after such a search, and after the 

 yarn has been spun the small boy is fast 

 asleep, long before the moral has been 

 reached. 



This night we were all rather tired. 

 We had been out in the high winds of a 

 crisp cold day, gathering nuts. The 

 chestnut-bark disease has not reached 

 our part of the country yet, and we have 

 also many hickory and butternut trees. 

 Wherever we had gone, a red squirrel 

 had chattered at us madly, for all the 

 world like a sewing-machine run wild. 

 Even the squirrels had no better hoard 

 for the winter than the one we gathered, 

 though they can use many kinds that we 

 do not eat, -as acorns and the seeds of 

 spruce and pine. In the Southwest the 

 Indians eat both acorns and pine seeds, 

 and have winter storage places for acorns, 

 from which they grind meal. They eat 

 the sweet-kerneled seeds of the pinon, 

 which are very good indeed, and much 

 larger than our eastern pine seeds. 



This time, none of the favorite old 

 stories would do ; after some trials to call 

 to mind a story that would seem to be 

 new, the fact that we had gathered chest- 



nuts during the day gave the cue for the 

 old story that follows: 



ONCE upon a time, then— for that 

 is the right way to start— there 

 was a prince ; and you'll find that 

 most such stories can not get 

 along very well without a prince or some- 

 body of that sort. He was a bad prince. 

 Ever since he was a baby he had been 

 given his own way. He broke all his toys 

 and he wasted his food; he threw horse- 

 chestnuts, in season, at the palace hens; 

 he whittled the legs of the parlor tables 

 and chairs; and he tore his clothes and 

 ground out the knees of his stockings 

 faster than the queen-mother and all the 

 ladies-in-waiting could dam them up 

 again. As he grew older he threw his 

 money away on foolish things that did 

 him no good and even did him some harm. 

 He spent his time with bad young fellows, 

 and he would not learn to do anything 

 useful. 



The king, his father, grew very angry 

 at this, and in the end he told the young 

 man to clear out, to leave the palace and 

 not come back. More than this, as was 

 the custom of that time, the king put a 

 curse on the youth by which he would 

 not have any more things to waste. This 

 was easy for the king to bring about, 

 because he owned everything for miles 

 around. So when he told the prince that 

 he was not to use the crops of the fields, 

 the king could see that this order was 

 fully carried out. He made a good strong 

 curse while he was about it, did the king, 

 and besides the crops of the fields, the 

 young man could not have the use of the 

 wealth of the mines, or of the fish that 

 swam in the sea or in the streams that 

 flow down to the sea. The beasts of the 

 earth and the birds of the air were also 

 forbidden. He was a hard-hearted old 

 king, and the prince had been a waster 

 and a wild spender. 



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