literature

There is a Chinese tale, “The Singing Prisoner, ” in which a friendless man is bound hand and foot and thrown into a dungeon, where he lies on the cold stones unfed and untended. He has no hope of freedom and as complaint will avail him nothing, he begins to while away the hours by reciting poems and stories he had learned in youth. So happily does he vary the tones of the speakers, feigning, in turn, the voices of kings and courtiers, lovers and princesses, birds and beasts, that he speedily draws all his fellow prisoners around him, beguiling them by the spell of his genius.