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CHAPTER III
He knew he could go wherever he pleased, and so with very little delay he entered a deep forest. It was evening and the wind was sighing in the great trees. A winding road stretched before him like a gray ribbon.
Soon he came to where a boy sat by the side of the road. The boy sat on a small Oriental rug, and by his side stood a very peculiar lamp. The boy was clad in a purple garment made of silk, with slippers to match. He wore a very fine skull-cap, also of silk, and a pig-tail hung down his back. His eyes were very peculiar. They were placed in his head a little on end; but they were bright and friendly. His mouth was like a little bow. The lips were merry and red. His cheeks were like peaches.
Everychild stopped and looked at the boy, and the boy smiled at him. "I am trying to think of your name," said Everychild, pondering. Surely he had seen this boy before—but where?
"Everychild knows me," returned the boy. "My name is Aladdin."
"Aladdin—of course!" said Everychild. He sat down by Aladdin on the Oriental rug. "And this is your lamp," he said, his eyes shining.
"Alas!—yes," replied Aladdin sadly; and Everychild was surprised that Aladdin could speak sadly. But Aladdin said no more about the lamp just then. He turned his eyes, which seemed a bit askew, upon Everychild. "You were marching bravely as you came along," he said. "I was watching you. And I thought to myself, 'How can any one walk bravely along a road like this?'"
For an instant Everychild's heart was troubled. "Isn't it a good road to walk on?" he asked.
Aladdin's reply was: "It is called The Road of Troubled Children."
Everychild thought a moment. That was a strange name, certainly. "It seems a little lonely," he ventured, thinking that perhaps Aladdin would explain why he did not like the road.
"It is lonely," said Aladdin; "yet all children walk here sometimes. You see, it is a very long road, so that many may walk on it without encountering one another."
Neither spoke for a moment, and there was no sound save the wind in the trees.
Then Aladdin said, "When you have walked here a little longer perhaps you will not walk so bravely." There was an obscure smile on his lips as he said this.
But Everychild replied quickly, "Oh, yes, I shall. You see, I shall remember my friends."
"Your friends?" asked Aladdin.
"Father Time, for one. I wish you could have seen how he took my part!"
Aladdin nodded slowly. "I am hoping he will be a friend to me some day," he said.
"And then there is the Masked Lady," continued Everychild.
"The Masked Lady?" repeated Aladdin in a puzzled tone.
"She lent me her sword."
But Aladdin mused darkly until his eyes rested upon his lamp. "I'd rather persons didn't wear masks—of any sort," he said. "Sometimes they are dangerous enemies."
He seemed so troubled as he said this that Everychild asked him, "But you, Aladdin—why are you making a journey on the Road of Troubled Children?"
"I?" replied Aladdin in surprise. "Why, because I am the most troubled child of all!"
Everychild could scarcely believe this. "And yet," he said, "with your wonderful lamp you have only to wish for things, and they are yours!"
Aladdin made ready to tell his story. He adjusted himself more comfortably on the Oriental rug, and at last he sighed deeply. "The child who has everything is never happy," he said.
Everychild simply could not believe this; and Aladdin read the disbelief in his eyes.
"It is true," he said. "Having everything you wish for is like having more money than any one else. And in such a case, how could one be happy? How many things would be denied one!—pleasant solitude, simple friendships, even a good name. Those who had too little would 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 want."
He immediately regretted having said this; for Aladdin took up his lamp. "Very well," he said, placing the lamp in Everychild's hands. And there was a malicious gleam in his slanting eyes as he added, "Suppose you make a wish. But I charge you!—think twice before you wish."
Everychild could not take back his words; and besides, he was tempted. He touched the lamp with trembling fingers. He rubbed it, hoping that Aladdin would not laugh at him for being awkward or inexperienced. And sure enough, the genie of the lamp appeared.
Everychild became quite dumb. He cast an appealing glance at Aladdin. "Won't you make a wish?" he begged. "After all, it's very hard, knowing what to wish for."
"It is," admitted Aladdin. "No, I'll not make a wish. It was you who summoned the genie. You shall make your own wish!"
At this Everychild glanced at the genie as if in search of assistance. But he received no encouragement at all. The genie really looked like a person who had come to bring evil rather than good. And Everychild felt his heart pounding painfully, and his head throbbing. But at last a happy thought occurred to him. He might make a very little wish!
"It is getting dark," he said to the genie, trying to speak as if he were thoroughly experienced in making wishes, "I wish I had a nice place to sleep, here in the forest."
He had scarcely spoken when he realized that he was all alone: Aladdin with his Oriental rug and his lamp was gone; the genie was gone. His hand was resting upon something very soft and cool. It seemed like a carpet, though finer than any carpet he had ever seen. And he remembered how his mother had scolded him more than once for lying on the carpet at home.
"But no one will scold me for lying here," he reflected.
So it came about that on his first night away from home he slept on the beautiful green carpet, with the Road of Troubled Children hard by.
And he could not know that the thing he had wished for, and which had been given him was the very thing which poor beggars, beloved of God, are granted every tranquil summer night.