Adventures of a Cobble-Stone
THERE was in the town a cobbled roadway. A wheel of a passing cart loosened one of the stones. The stone said to himself, "Why should I lie here close packed with others of my kind? I will live separately."
A boy came along and picked up the cobble-stone.
Thought the stone to himself: "I wanted to travel and I travel. I only had to wish sufficiently strongly."
The boy threw the stone at a house. Thought the stone: "I wish to fly and I fly. It's quite simple—I just willed it."
Bang went the stone against the window-glass. The glass broke and in doing so cried out:
"Oh, you scoundrel! What are you doing?"
But the stone replied:
"You'd have done better to get out of the way. I don't like people getting in my way. Everything arranged for my benefit—that's my motto."
The stone fell on a soft bed and thought: "I've flown a bit, and now I'll lie down for a while and rest."
A servant came and took the stone off the bed and threw it out at the window again so that it fell back on the cobbled roadway.
Then the stone cried out to his fellow-cobbles: "Brothers, good health, I've just been paying a call at one of the mansions, but I did not at all care for the aristocracy, my heart yearned for the common people, so I returned."