far as to employ the services of the maphia to get rid of the miserable human remains that lay dying interminably between sheets drenched in sweat and stained by natural excretions, but they deserve our disapprobation, as does the family described in the oft-told tale of the wooden bowl, although, fortunately, as you will see, they were saved at the last moment from the final execration thanks to the kind heart of a child of eight. It is a tale quickly told, and we will leave it here for the illumination of new generations who do not know it, in the hope that they do not mock it for being ingenuous or sentimental. Listen, then, to this moral lesson. Once upon a time, in the ancient land of fables, there was a family consisting of a father, a mother, a grandfather who was the father's father, and the aforementioned child of eight, a little boy. Now the grandfather was very old and because of that his hands shook and when he was at table he sometimes dropped his food, to the great irritation of his son and his daughter-in-law, who were always telling him to eat more carefully, but the poor old man, however hard he tried, could not stop his shaking, which only got worse when they told him off, and so he was always staining the tablecloth or dropping food on the floor, not to mention on the napkin they tied around his neck and which they had to change three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This was how things stood, with no hope of improvement, when the son decided to put a stop to the unpleasant situation. He arrived home with a wooden bowl and said to his father, From now on, you'll eat here, sitting on the doorstep, because that's easier to clean, and your daughter-in-law won't have to deal with all those dirty tablecloths and napkins. And so it was. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the old man sat alone on the doorstep, raising the food to his mouth as best he could, losing half on the way, while part of the other half dribbled onto his chin, with very little actually making it down what common folk would call his gullet. The grandson seemed entirely unmoved by the cruel treatment being meted out to his grandfather, he would look at him, then look at his mother and father, and continue to eat as if it were none of his business. Then one afternoon, when the father came home from work, he saw his son carving a piece of wood and assumed he was making himself a toy, as was normal in those distant days. The following day, however, he realized that the boy wasn't making a toy car, or at least if he was, he couldn't see where the wheels would go, and so he asked, What are you making. The boy pretended he hadn't heard and continued whittling away at the wood with the point of his knife, this happened in the days when parents were less fearful and wouldn't immediately snatch from their children's hands such a useful tool for making toys. Didn't you hear me, I asked what you're making with that piece of wood, the father asked again, and his son, without glancing up from what he was doing, replied, I'm making a bowl for when you're old and your hands shake and you're sent to sit on the front step to eat your meals, like you did with grandpa. These words had a magical effect. The scales fell from the father's eyes, he saw the truth and its light, and went at once to ask his own father's forgiveness, and when supper-time arrived, he helped him sit down in the chair, fed him with a spoon and gently wiped his chin, because he could still do that, and his dear father could not. History fails to recount what happened afterward, but we know for certain that the boy's carving was interrupted and the piece of wood is still there. No one wanted to throw it away, perhaps because they didn't want the lesson to be forgotten or because they thought that someone might one day decide to finish the job, which was all too possible when one bears in mind the enormous capacity for survival of the aforesaid darker side of human nature. As someone
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