One Onion

hmmm....

Once upon a time there lived a very nasty, horrible old woman.

When she died, she didn't leave behind her one single good deed.

So the devils got hold of her and tossed her into the flaming lake.

Meantime, her guardian angel stood there, trying hard to think on good deed of hers that he could mention to God in order to save her.

Then he remembered and said to God: "Once," he said, "she pulled up an onion in her garden and gave it to a beggar woman."

So God said to him: "Take that onion, hold it out to her over the lake, let her hold on to it, and try to pull herself out.

If she does, let her enter heaven; if the onion breaks, the old woman will just have to stay where she is."

So the angel hurried to the woman, held out the onion to her, and told her to take hold of it and pull.

Then he himself began pull her out very carefully and she was almost entirely out of the lake when the other sinners saw she was being pulled out and grabbed on to her so that they'd be pulled out of the flames too.

But when she saw them, that wicked, horrible woman started kicking them saying: "I am being pulled out, not you, for it's my onion, not yours!"

As soon as she she said that, the onion snapped and the woman fell back into the flaming lake, where she's still burning to this day.

And her guardian angel wept and walked away.

(Brothers Karamazov).

If you want to know human psychology read Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)...a Russian novelist, journalist, short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the human soul had a profound influence on the 20th century novel.