It was curious to watch a bird diving down in the sunny water, and then suddenly come up again with a struggling fish in his bill. The fish was, however, always taken away from the cormorant, and thrown by one of the Fing Fangs into a well at the bottom of the boat.
"Cousin Ko," said the miser, leaning forward to speak, "how is it that your clever cormorants never devour the fish they catch?"
"Cousin Chang Wang," replied the young man, "dost thou not see that each bird has an iron ring round his neck, so that he cannot swallow? He only fishes for others."
"Methinks the cormorant has a hard life of it," observed the miser, smiling. "He must wish his iron ring at the bottom of the Yang-se-kiang."
Fing Fang, who had just let loose two young cormorants from the boat, turned round, and from his narrow slits of Chinese eyes looked keenly upon his nephew.
"Didst thou ever hear of a creature," said he, "that puts an iron ring around his own neck?"
"There is no such creature in all the land that the Great Wall borders," replied Chang Wang.
Fing Fang solemnly shook the pigtail which hung down his back. Like many of the Chinese, he had read a great deal, and was a kind of philosopher in his way.
"Nephew Chang Wang," he observed, "_I_ know of a creature (and he is not far off at this moment) who is always fishing for gain--constantly catching, but never enjoying. Avarice--the love of hoarding--is the iron ring round his neck; and so long as it stays there, he is much like one of our trained cormorants--he may be clever, active, successful, but he is only fishing for others."
I leave my readers to guess whether the sharp dealer understood his uncle's meaning, or whether Chang Wang resolved in future not only to catch, but to enjoy. Fing Fang's moral might be good enough for a heathen, but it does not go nearly far enough for a Christian. If a miser is like a cormorant with an iron ring round his neck, the man or the child who lives for his own pleasure only, what is he but a greedy cormorant with the iron ring? Who would wish to resemble a cormorant at all? The bird knows the enjoyment of _getting_; let us prize the richer enjoyment of _giving_. Let me close with an English proverb, which I prefer to the Chinaman's parable--"Charity is the truest epicure, for she eats with many mouths."