In a quaint little village, there was a diligent farmer named Bella. Every spring, she prepared to plant her beloved beans, often daydreaming of one day acquiring magical beans that would guarantee her success without the need for hard work. Despite these daydreams, the reality was that her entire livelihood depended on producing an abundant crop every year.
“Ah,” she would sigh, “if only I could plant a magic bean that grows by itself and produces beans all on its own.” But there were no such things as magic beans.
As the spring arrived, she rose early, set to work, and planted her entire crop. As evening drew closer, her neighbor Jess came by for a chat. “How are you? All ready for the planting to begin?”
“Yes, I am just finishing now. But tell me, have you never heard of the magic bean? You plant it and it grows by itself.”
“Nonsense. All the beans I know need to be tended and watered, dug up and replanted, and harvested before you can eat them.”
“But I heard there are beans that work and grow of themselves, and make all your work unnecessary. You should get some,” suggested Bella eagerly.
“Then you’re indeed fortunate,” said Jess, “for I do happen to know such a bean.”
“Where can I get some?” asked Bella eagerly.
“I will show you. Come here after dark and I will lead you to where it grows.”
Jess was very obliging over this, and Bella came later with her bag, all ready to gather her beans. When she came up to the place in the wood, she found her friend Jess, and did not notice till after he led her that she was really going down the hill to the swamp, where beans would be of little use, and Jess thought himself very clever for tricking his neighbor.
Bella returned glumly to her wife, and complained at the bad luck she had had in finding beans enough to plant.
“I found a lot in the swamp, but I am afraid there will never be more than enough for myself. I must not complain; it is my own fault really for being such a simpleton.”
So the weeks passed, and every day Bella watered the little patch and pulled up the weeds and watched it, hoping for some beans.
One fine day a neighbor came by in muttering more than usual. She asked him what was the matter.
“My beans are all eaten by mice,” said he.
“It’s not a good year for beans,” said she. “But ours will be better at harvest.”
In the middle of the summer, when all the pollen had been blown from flower to flower by the bees, and every blossom was bursting with its precious treasure of early fruit, there came to the village once more the traveling musician whom they had all been so glad to see at even-tide, when after the hard work of the day a sweet tune told them that hours had passed for song and story before bed-time.
The days passed ripening the poorer man’s little crop of beans. Only Bella’s were slowly ripening in the hot sunshine, to wither in the hill breeze till time should come when the bean festival should be held.
Bella’s wife could not understand it.
“I thought they would grow of themselves, for you ravaged so through the woods looking for seeds.”
But months passed, and at last harvest came, and after due labor and toil all Bella’s beans and other crops were gathered in, and the beans were indeed found to be as fine and full and tender a crop as anyone could wish.
On the following Friday the bean festival was proclaimed throughout the village. How the people talked and how the children guessed which would be best, the round white beans, the long green pod beans, or the marbled beans, green and purple. All eyes were turned to Bella, whose fine harvest made her garden a sight to behold as the people went to the festival. First she had her house adorned for the occasion with garlands of corn and bean flowers and flags of green festooned from every post.
Rich and poor came in great numbers, and all the jackdaws, sparrows, squirrels, and other fowl and beasts belonging to the interval were well feasted. Satchel on back and trumpet in mouth, the townsfolk stretched out in processional ‘military order’ to the house of the mayor, who boasted of never having tasted such fresh, tender, young beans.
“Who sent them? When did they come?”
As each basket was set down the mayor buried his mouth and fork deep in a dish and declared that there was nothing in his whole garden that could hold a candle to this dish.
From all parts still came villagers who had heard the bad news of the little harvest, till at last Bella’s wife had a huge basketful left.
For the next course cream was set forth in bowls of earthenware, with yeast cakes and fritters of all kinds. Another basket came from Bella, then another dish from a friend; and when bells gave notice of the time to go home, Mrs. Bella went up to her house in the greatest trouble; for out of five baskets carried, one was mysteriously left empty, but all declared they had never tasted anything half so nice throughout the whole of their lives.
“Bella wins the prize,” the mayor declared, and a crowd shouted with delight.
They were old friends, and singing a sort of love ditty, the villagers commenced to dance round Bella, who stood as queen of the festival in a crown of greens.
But the festival of Bella’s bean crop cannot be put down in detail any more than her tears and the excuses of the guests who had declared they had never eaten any beans half so good while they themselves and the rats and rabbits at her beans, so there were few left.
But the crowd cheered for joy and shouted over and over again at Bella’s harvest. Even her wife led the applause, saying, “All I can say is that for myself I am a good deal better treated, though still where they grind their own when they do not want yours to eat. But of a great dish of beans, hardly a score of hundreds of dishes are outdone. But perhaps you would like a few of O.P.’s. We picked them all in the forest,—and did not eat a single one.”
“Ballad of most useful beans—a few straw.”
Bella meant After this affair, all sprout and wood and forest culms were planted in the garden to bear for Queen Bella, and she cared and watered them, prayed and hunted those that were vaster than her kitchen, but if all seeds got on as those of “Sweet Santa Maria” did, why be surprised if they break up the sky themselves?
So when birds stayed away from the Black Forest mountain, and yet more of the first, she gave up borrowing, when near not far off she had climbing crops of the greatest possible size.
But, as most beautiful dreams come to an end, this did; and there grew before her thousands of meters which she herself swept out every morning.
“I wonder,” thought she, “at all this nonsense and what the beads we wore would cost”—here she noticed people throwing things over the walls—“ a hundred pounds of beans, who would have expected that! Come on, cheer up at what can hardly be thought possible,” just as Mr. Dolktrostone come to the same house to drink beans with his wife!
The lesson Bella learned from this adventure is simple yet profound: Hard work often yields more substantial and rewarding results than the allure of effortless success.