One nightfall a man travelling onn
horseback towards the sea reached an inn by the roadside. He
dismounted and, confident in man and night like all riders towards 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 was 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."
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