Once upon a time there was an Emperor of China, named Lee Wong. He would have been a very good Emperor if he had not been spoiled by kindness.

If he cried when he was a baby, his nurse called all the nurses in the palace.

They called the attendants, and the attendants called the musicians. The musicians played, the attendants danced, and the nurses walked up and down wheeling the baby in his carriage until he stopped crying. Sometimes this happened many times in one day.

When Lee was a boy he had his own way in everything. If he played soldier he was always the general. If he went to fly kites, he had the ones that would fly the highest.

Sometimes he wished to fly his kites when the wind did not blow. Then the poor attendants had to blow with a huge bellows to make the kites sail up into the air.

If he wished it were summer in the winter-time, they filled his playroom with beautiful plants and brought canaries and nightingales to sing to him.

In the hot summer days, if he longed for winter, they brought evergreen trees to the playroom. They covered the branches with cotton sprinkled with diamond dust to look like snow. They brought cakes of ice and made a skating rink and jingled sleigh bells all day long while he played.

When he was a young man it was still worse. If he said anything, like, “This is a sunny morning,” or “I think it will rain to-night,” every one cried, “How wise!” “How wonderfully wise!”

So you see the Emperor was spoiled, and this was very unfortunate.

In China, just as in other places, every one longs for spring to come.

One year the Emperor wanted the spring to come more than ever. He had had a dull winter in his city palace and he wanted to go to his country palace.

“Command my brother, the Sun, to shine to-morrow,” he said, to his attendants. “Command the spring to come, also. And be ready, all of you, to go to the country to-morrow.”

One of the attendants wrote the Emperor’s commands on the finest Chinese paper and then burned it in the garden. He thought in this way the commands might reach the sun.

Perhaps they did; for the sun shone beautifully the next day, and the Emperor and his attendants went to the country palace.

II

The next morning the Emperor waked up very early. A little bird was singing in the garden. It was a lovely day.

The Emperor thought he would go out into the garden to hear the little bird sing.

He put on his silk dressing-gown, his silver shoes, and his gold crown. It was only six o’clock, so no one was awake in the palace.

When the Emperor went into the garden the bird flew into the forest and sang still more sweetly.

“How stupid I was,” thought the Emperor, “I ought to have commanded it to stay here. Now I must go into the woods to see it.”

So he opened the gate and went across the field.

At the edge of the woods a peasant was plowing.

“Good morning, peasant,” said the Emperor, “That must be an Emperor bird singing in the forest, because it sings so sweetly.”

“No, my lord,” said the peasant, taking off his cap, “that is a blackbird.”

“You may call it so,” said the Emperor; “but it is an Emperor bird if I say so, because I am always right. It is as large as a swan, and its feathers are like shining gold.”

“No, my lord,” said the peasant, “it is small and black.”

Just then the blackbird lighted on a post in the fence and began to sing. It was easy to see that the peasant was right.

“There must surely be something wrong,” said the Emperor, “because I never make a mistake.”

“But, my lord, the Emperor can make a mistake. Every one does that. Your attendants may say that you are always right because they wish to please you. Perhaps they even praise what you do, when it is wrong and foolish.”

“I can never believe that,” said the Emperor.

“If you will do as I say,” replied the peasant, “I will prove that I have told you the truth.”

III

The Emperor promised to do this, although he could not believe he had been deceived.

Just then all the attendants came running across the field, for they had waked up and missed the Emperor.

Tears ran down their cheeks. They wished to have the Emperor think they were weeping because he was gone. He did not know each one had an onion in his handkerchief.

“Command them to stop where they are,” the peasant whispered.

The Emperor made them stop about twenty feet away, right in the middle of a ditch.

“We are weeping because of your absence, beloved Emperor,” said the chief attendant. He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, and all the others did the same thing.

“How do you dare to stand beside the Emperor, you peasant,” said the Lord Marshal. “Go back to your plow!”

“Say that I am standing beside my plow,” whispered the peasant. He was really standing beside the Emperor, and the plow was thirty feet away.

“Do you not see,” said the Emperor, “that he is standing beside the plow?”

“Oh, yes,” said one, “he is holding the plow with one hand.”

“Yes, yes,” said another, “he is surely driving his oxen.”

“Ask them,” whispered the peasant, “if they ever saw such white oxen.”

Now the peasant’s oxen were coal black, without a single white spot on them.

“Have you ever seen such beautiful white oxen?” said the Emperor, pointing to the black ones.

“No, never,” said one, “they are indeed snow white.”

“Yes,” said another, “they are whiter than snow. It hurts my eyes to look at them, they are so white.”

The Emperor knew now that they were not telling the truth, and he decided to punish them.

“Come here,” he called to some peasants who were plowing in the next field.

“There is nothing so pleasant as plowing,” he said to his attendants.

“It is a great pleasure,” said one.

“I enjoy it more than anything in the world,” said another.

“I would rather plow than dance,” said a third.

“I am very glad you think so, my lords,” said the Emperor. “These peasants will be glad to have you plow for them. This is my command. Begin at once!”

There was no help for it. The courtiers did not dare to disobey, so they took hold of the plows and tried to drive the oxen across the long fields.

I do not believe they plowed very well, for they had never touched a plow before, and did not know how to drive oxen.

But the peasant went to the palace and became the Emperor’s chief counsellor.

The Emperor had this story written on a block of marble in golden letters, but few people can read it because it is written in Chinese, and it is very hard to have to read Chinese.

—Anna von RydingsvÄrd.