The Artist

One evening there stirred in his soul the desire to fashion the image of "The Happiness That Lasts a Moment," and he went about the world in search of bronze to fashion it, for he could think of nothing but bronze.

But he found no trace of bronze in the whole world. Not a single piece of it was to be found, save the metal from which had been fashioned the image of "The Sorrow That Endures Forever."

This image he himself possessed: he had fashioned it with his own hands and set it upon the grave of the one thing he had loved in his life — upon the grave of that dead one whom he had loved from his heart. He had set there this image of his own making, that it might point to a man's love that does not perish, and stand as a token of a man's sorrow that abides forever. And in all the world there was no metal but the metal of that image.

He took the image he had fashioned and slid it into a great furnace, to be food for the fire. And of the metal of the image of "The Sorrow That Endures Forever" he fashioned the image of "The Happiness That Lasts a Moment."