is thought:

"My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it
seemed well with me for a little while. How little a while it was! Then
came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate; then persecution.
Then derision, which is the beginning of the end. And last of all came
pity, which is the funeral of fame. Oh, the bitterness and misery of
renown! target for mud in its prime, for contempt and compassion in its
decay."

Chapter IV

"Chose yet again." It was the fairy's voice.

"Two gifts remain. And do not despair. In the beginning there was but
one that was precious, and it is still here."

"Wealth--which is power! How blind I was!" said the man. "Now, at last,
life will be worth the living. I will spend, squander, dazzle. These
mockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and I will feed
my hungry heart with their envy. I will have all luxuries, all joys, all
enchantments of the spirit, all contentments of the body that man holds
dear. I will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every
pinchbeck grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth.
I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass; I
was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so."

Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in
a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in
rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:

"Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! And
miscalled, every one. They are not gifts, but merely lendings. Pleasure,
Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for lasting
realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty. The fairy said true; in all her
store there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was not
valueless. How poor and cheap and mean I know those others now to be,
compared with that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly one,
that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the pains that persecute the
body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart. Bring it! I
am weary, I would rest."

Chapter V

The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting.
She said:

"I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. It was ignorant, but
trusted me, asking me to choose for it. You did not ask me to choose."

"Oh, miserable me! What is left for me?"

"What not even you have deserved: the wa