The stone cutter

CEBU, Philippines - Once upon a time there lived in a small village a stone cutter.  All day  long he worked hard,  cutting  the hard stones and making  these into shapes his customers wanted. His hands were  hard and  his  clothes  were dirty.

One day he went out to work on a big stone. It was very hard to work on and the sun was very hot. After spending several hours  cutting  the stone, he sat  down in  the shade and soon fell asleep.

After sometime, he heard sound of footsteps coming his way. Waking up he saw a long procession of people. There were many  soldiers  and attendants and, in the middle, in a palanquin carried by muscled men, was the king.

“How wonderful it must be to be the great king,”  the stone  cutter thought. “How happy I would be if i were the king instead of a poor stone cutter.”

As he said these words, a strange thing happened.  The stone  cutter found himself dressed in silk  clothes  and shining jewels. His hands were soft and he was sitting in a comfortable palanquin.

He looked through the curtains and thought, “How easy life is when you’re a king. These people are here to serve me.”

The procession moved on and the sun grew hot.  The stone  cutter, now the king, felt it too warm for comfort. He asked the procession to stop so that he could rest for a while. At once the chief of the  soldiers  bent before the king and said, “Your Majesty, only this morning you swore to have me hanged to death if we did not reach the palace before sunset.”

The stone  cutter had no choice but to order the procession to proceed. As the afternoon wore on, the sun grew hotter, and the king became more and more uncomfortable. “I am powerful, it is true,” he thought. “But how more powerful the sun is. I’d rather be the sun than a king.” At once, he became the sun, shining  down on the  earth. His new power was much too hard to control.

He shone too strongly, he burned up the fields with his rays and turned the ocean into vapor and formed a great cloud which covered the land. But no matter how hard he shone, he could not see through  the clouds. “It is as if the clouds  are even stronger and more powerful than sun,” said  the stone  cutter, now the sun. “I would rather be a cloud.” And suddenly he found himself turned into a huge dark cloud.

He started using his new power. He poured rain  down on the  fields and caused floods. All the trees and houses were  swept away  but a boulder, which once he had been  cutting  when he was a stone cutter, was unmoved and unchanged.

However much he poured down on  the stone  it did not move. “Why is that rock more powerful than I am?” wondered  the dark cloud. “Ah, so only a stone cutter could change the rock,” he pondered. “How I wish I were a stonecutter again.”

No sooner had he said the words that he found himself sitting on a stone with  hard and  rough hands. The stone cutter picked up his tools and set to work on a boulder, happily. (www.kidsgen.com)