From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Last night I didn’t want to go to bed early so Alma said that if I would, she would tell me a wonderful story. The name of it is “The Lady and the Tiger” and it isn’t a story at all, it is a riddle. I shall write it in this book so when I am eighty years old I can read it to myself…
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who was in love with a common man. He was a very good man, but he wasn’t rich, and so he couldn’t buy the princess any rings or bracelets or necklaces. Of course, the princess didn’t want all those things, but her mother and father wanted her to have them all. Mothers and fathers always want their children to have everything that they want for them. So the poor princess had to go on wanting the poor young man and when her mother and father kept on telling her how ugly he looked in his raggedy old clothes and pointed instead to other young men wearing purple velvet trimmed in ermine tails, she loved him even more. And when they said, wasn’t she ashamed of him walking around on his own feet instead of riding around on a beautiful white horse with golden tassels, she loved him still more. So one day her father the king got very impatient. He said, “Enough is enough! Tomorrow at two in the afternoon, your lover must go into the arena.” The arena was a big yard where wild animals were turned loose to eat the Christians. Whenever there was one to be eaten, there was then a big holiday in the town, and everybody got all dressed up in silver and gold and wore flowers and feathers and they came to the arena, and the band played music and the flags waved, and people went around selling lemonade and candy and all sorts of good things to eat, and everyone was merry, except the poor Christian who was going to be eaten, and maybe his wife. Well, the princess heard what her father was going to do, and she was quite worried, and couldn’t eat her dinner that night. So her father, who really loved her, said “Look, I don’t’ want to be too mean. I am going to give your lover a chance.”
The actual title of the story is “The Lady, or the Tiger?,” a short story by Frank R. Stockton, published in 1882.