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    7 best short stories - Morality Tales
    7 best short stories - Morality Tales
    7 best short stories - Morality Tales
    Ebook37 pages22 minutes

    7 best short stories - Morality Tales

    By Stephen Leacock, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain and

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    About this ebook

    One of the functions of literature is to share experiences and reflections, thus improving the community as a whole. It is in this spirit that the authors compiled here wrote stories full of important lessons. Critic August Nemo selected seven short stories with timeless messages:
    The Aged Mother by Matsuo Basho

    - The Five Boons of Life by Mark Twain
    - The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones by Stephen Leacock
    - Work, Death and Sickness by Leo Tolstoy
    - The Father by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
    - Emancipation. A Life Fable by Kate Chopin
    - An Uncomfortable Bed by Guy de MaupassantFor more books with interesting themes, be sure to check the other books in this collection!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTacet Books
    Release dateMay 12, 2020
    ISBN9783967991888
    7 best short stories - Morality Tales
    Author

    Stephen Leacock

    Award-winning Canadian humorist and writer Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) was the author of more than 50 literary works, and between 1915 and 1925 was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world. Leacock’s fictional works include classics like Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, and Literary Lapses. In addition to his humor writings, Leacock was an accomplished political theorist, publishing such works as Elements of Political Science and My Discovery of the West: A Discussion of East and West in Canada, for which he won the Governor General's Award for writing in 1937. Leacock’s life continues to be commemorated through the awarding of the Leacock Medal for Humour and with an annual literary festival in his hometown of Orillia, Ontario.

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      Book preview

      7 best short stories - Morality Tales - Stephen Leacock

      Publisher

      The Five Boons of Life

      by Mark Twain

      ––––––––

      Chapter I

      ––––––––

      In the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said:

      Here are gifts. Take one, leave the others. And be wary, chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable.

      The gifts were five: Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death. The youth said, eagerly:

      There is no need to consider; and he chose Pleasure.

      He went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth delights in. But each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing, vain and empty; and each, departing, mocked him. In the end he said: "These years I have wasted. If I could but choose again, I would choose wisely.

      Chapter II

      ––––––––

      The fairy appeared, and said:

      Four of the gifts remain. Choose once more; and oh, remember—time is flying, and only one of them is precious.

      The man considered long, then chose Love; and did not mark the tears that rose in the fairy's eyes.

      After many, many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home. And he communed with himself, saying: One by one they have gone away and left me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last. Desolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour of happiness the treacherous trader, Love, as sold me I have paid a thousand hours of grief. Out of my heart of hearts I curse him.

      Chapter III

      ––––––––

      Choose again. It was the fairy speaking.

      The years have taught you wisdom—surely it must be so. Three gifts remain. Only one of them has any worth—remember it, and choose warily.

      The man reflected long, then chose Fame; and the fairy, sighing, went her way.

      Years went by and she came again, and stood behind the man where he sat solitary in the fading

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