my sermon I will preach

However, when Bearskin reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of ducats, the innkeeper softened and gave him a room in an outbuilding. Bearskin, however, had to promise not to let himself be seen, lest the inn should get a bad name.

One evening Bearskin was sitting alone, wishing with all his heart that the seven years were over, he heard a loud moaning in a neighboring room. He had a compassionate heart, so he opened the door and saw an old man weeping bitterly and striking his hands together above his head. Bearskin went nearer, but the man jumped to his feet and tried to run away. At last, hearing a human voice, the man let Bearskin talk to him, and with friendly words Bearskin succeeded in getting the old man to reveal the cause of his grief. Slowly but surely the old man had lost his wealth, and now he and his daughters would have to starve. He was so poor that he could not pay the innkeeper and was to be sent to prison.

Old Hildebrand

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Once upon a time there was a peasant whose wife appealed to the village priest. The priest wanted ever so much to spend an entire day alone with her, and the peasant's wife was quite willing.

One day he said to her, "Listen, dear woman, I've thought it through, and I know how the two of us can spend an entire day together. On Wednesday tell your husband that you are sick and lie down in bed moaning and groaning. Carry on like that until Sunday, when in  that if anyone has a sick child at home, a sick husband, a sick wife, a sick father, a sick mother, a sick sister, brother, or anyone else, then that person should make a pilgrimage to Mount Cuckoo in Italy.