but also meeting with bad company,” continued the old woman. “Last year’s poor crop caused so much hunger that tribes of beggars now rove through the neighborhood.”
“Not a shadow of a person did I meet,” the young man impatiently replied, shrugging his shoulders. “And yet I did, but the meeting was in no way unpleasant. In a forest meadow, under an old larch tree, sat an aged man. Gray hair hung from his temples, like the whitish moss hanging over his head from the branches of the tree. On his lap he held an old book, from which he was carefully reading. Unconsciously I stopped. Looking at the group, it seemed to me that time for once had neglected to sweep away some things into his rapacious current—that trio, the man, the tree, the book. The old man looked up, saw me, and thinking, I suppose, that I was afraid to pass, he kindly said: ‘Pass on, pass on, young man. He who travels with a harp is safe in the promised land.’”
The stewardess, just bringing the cooked
