15
TWO BROTHERS
board and chalk. The second brought his pipe and horn, and he wants you to
play the horn and pipe for him. But I decided to come see you first. Tell
them all that. Send them back where they came from, Granddad.”
“No, I came to draw first. Then my brother decided to come with me to
play the horn,” said the grandson with the thin piece of board.
“There are two of you granddads,” the granddaughter prattled. “Will you
decide which of us came first? Pick me or else I’ll cry bitter tears.”
The wise man looked at the grandchildren with a smile and sorrow. Pre-
paring an answer and frowning as he concentrated, the wise man still did not
say anything. The younger brother was bustling about and did not let the
pause that arose lengthen.
He quickly took the horn from the child’s hands and without thinking
said, “There is no reason for you to argue at all. Dance, my beauty and hop-
per, and I will play a dance on the horn. My dear musician will help me play
the pipe. And you, artist, draw what the sounds of the music draw and what
the ballerina dances. Draw it. Now then, everyone get busy quickly.”
The younger brother played a cheerful and beautiful melody on the pipe,
and the grandchildren all repeated after him simultaneously, choosing their
favorite thing to depict. The future great musician tried not to lag behind on
the melody on the pipe. As a ballerina, the little girl hopped, turning red,
joyously depicting her dance. The future artist joyfully drew his picture.
The wise man was silent. The wise man learned. . . . When the merriment
was over, he stood up and said, “Remember, my younger brother, our
father’s old chisel and hammer, give them to me. I want to chisel our main
lesson in stone. I am leaving now. I probably will not return. Don’t try to
stop me, and don’t wait.”
The older brother left. The gray-haired wise man and his disciples walked
up to the stone; the path went round that stone—the path that called the
seeker of wisdom to distant lands away from his own home. The day passed,
night came, and the gray-haired wise man hammered and chiseled an in-
scription in the stone. When the exhausted gray-haired old man finished, his
disciples read the inscription on the stone:
