Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/194

 mate how much net profit his wares would bring him this time, and the result of a close calculation was, that by not expending a single penny at home, and by making his poor industrious wife furnish, not only herself and the children, but him also, with clothes and food by her own exertions, he should clear enough, at the approaching fair of Schmiedeberg, to purchase an ass, and load it with goods for a new journey; and he already anticipated, with great satisfaction, how very comfortable it would be to have merely to walk by the side of a laden donkey, instead of carrying the donkey’s load on his own shoulders. The thought was so exhilarating, that he already saw in imagination a piled-up jackass by his side.

“Once I have got the ass,” he went on, “I shall soon be able to exchange it for a horse; the horse once in the stable, I shall soon get wherewithal to purchase an acre to grow oats for him; the one acre may, ere long, be made two, the two swell into four, and in time become a snug farm, and then I shan’t mind buying Lisa a new gown.”

He had just arrived at this stage of his airdrawn fortunes when much the same misadventure befel him that happened to Arabian Alnaschar, and to the aspiring milkmaid nearer home. He did not, ’tis true, kick down his own basket, but ’twas done quite as effectually for him by Rubezahl, who,