Critics

One nightfall a man travelling on horseback toward the sea reached an

inn by the roadside. He dismounted, and confident in man and night like

all riders toward the sea, he tied his horse to a tree beside the door

and entered into the inn.

At midnight, when all were asleep, a thief came and stole the

traveller’s horse.

In the morning the man awoke, and discovered that his horse was stolen.

And he grieved for his horse, and that a man had found it in his heart

to steal.

Then his fellow-lodgers came and stood around him and began to talk.

And the first man said, “How foolish of you to tie your horse outside

the stable.”

And the second said, “Still more foolish, without even hobbling the

horse!”

And the third man said, “It is stupid at best to travel to the sea on

horseback.”

And the fourth said, “Only the indolent and the slow of foot own

horses.”

Then the traveller was much astonished. At last he cried, “My friends,

because my horse is stolen, you have hastened one and all to tell me my

faults and my shortcomings. But strange, not one word of reproach have

you uttered about the man who stole my horse.”