beyondthispunkt.tumblr.com / firdaus-9898.blogspot.com
I share with you a story about women. What I personally feel
about Malaysian women,especially the Malays, sometimes. I know not all
Malay women are like that, but I couldn’t help feeling it that way, anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_and_the_Tin_Box
The Princess and the Tin Box by James Thurber is a short fable
about a spoiled princess and how she picked her husband. The story
intentionally leads the reader down the wrong path, and shows that human
nature can deceive us.
Once upon a time, in a far country, there lived a King whose daughter
was the prettiest princess in the world. Her eyes were like the
cornflower, her hair was sweeter than the hyacinth, and her throat made
the swan look dusty
From the time she was a year old, the Princess had been showered with
presents. Her nursery looked like Cartier’s window. Her toys were all
made of gold or platinum or diamonds or emeralds. She was not permitted
to have wooden blocks or china dolls or rubber dogs or linen books,
because such materials were considered cheap for the daughter of a king.
When she was seven, she was allowed to attend the wedding of her
brother and throw real pearls at the bride instead of rice. Only the
nightingale, with his lyre of gold, was permitted to sing for the
Princess. The common blackbird, with his boxwood flute, was kept out of
the palace grounds. She walked in silver-and-samite slippers to a
sapphire-and-topaz bathroom and slept in an ivory bed inlaid with
rubies.
On the day the Princess was eighteen, the King sent a royal
ambassador to the courts of five neighboring kingdoms to announce that
he would give his daughter’s hand in marriage to the prince who brought
her the gift she liked the most.
The first prince to arrive at the palace rode a swift white stallion
and laid at the feet of the Princess an enormous apple made of solid
gold which he had taken from a dragon who had guarded it for a thousand
years. It was placed on a long ebony table set up to hold the gifts of
the Princess’ suitors.
The second prince, who came on a gray charger,
brought her a nightingale made of a thousand diamonds, and it was placed
beside the golden apple.
The third prince, riding on a black horse,
carried a great jewel box made of platinum and sapphires, and it was
placed next to the diamond nightingale.
The fourth prince, astride a
fiery yellow horse, gave the Princess a gigantic heart made of rubies
and pierced by an emerald arrow. It was placed next to the
platinum-and-sapphire jewel box.
Now the fifth prince was the strongest and handsomest of all the five
suitors, but he was the son of a poor king whose realm had been overrun
by mice and locusts and wizards and mining engineers so that there was
nothing much of value left in it. He came plodding up to the palace of
the Princess on a plow horse, and he brought her a small tin box filled
with mica and feldspar and hornblende (types of ordinary rocks) which he
had picked up on the way.
The other princes roared with disdainful laughter when they saw the
tawdry gift the fifth prince had brought to the Princess. But she
examined it with great interest and squealed with delight, for all her
life she had been glutted with precious stones and priceless metals, but
she had never seen tin before or mica or feldspar or hornblende. The
tin box was placed next to the ruby heart pierced with an emerald arrow.
“Now,” the King said to his daughter, “you must select the gift you like best and marry the prince that brought it.”
The Princess smiled and walked up to the table and picked up the
present she liked the most. It was the platinum-and-sapphire jewel box,
the gift of the third prince.
“The way I figure it,” she said, “is this. It is a very large and
expensive box, and when I am married, I will meet many admirers who will
give me precious gems with which to fill it to the top. Therefore, it
is the most valuable of all the gifts my suitors have brought me, and I
like it the best.”
The Princess married the third prince that very day in the midst of
great merriment and high revelry. More than a hundred thousand pearls
were thrown at her and she loved it.
Moral: All those who thought that the Princess was going
to select the tin box filled with worthless stones instead of one of the
other gifts will kindly stay after class and write one hundred times on
the blackboard, “I would rather have a hunk of aluminum silicate than a
diamond necklace.”