A man lived in a very comfortable house, with a large, light, airy cellar. The river ran near by.One day the river overflowed, the cellar was flooded, and all the hens that he kept in it were drowned.
The next day he went off to see the landlord.
‘I have come,’ he said ‘to give you notice. I wish to leave the house.’
‘How is that?’ asked the astonished landlord. ‘I thought you liked it so much. It is a very comfortable, well-built house, and cheap.’
‘Oh, yes,’ the tenant replied, ‘but the river has overflowed into my cellar, and all my hens are drowned.’
‘Oh, don't let that make you give up the house,’ the landlord reasoned; ‘try ducks!’
F W Boreham unfolds some of the issues of this story in his essay, recognizing the fine art of putting up with nasty things but encouraging the creative juices to flow to see if there is a better way to be living under difficult circumstances.
F W Boreham, ‘Landlord and Tenant’, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 52-53.