Page:An argosy of fables.djvu/283

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

HINDOO FABLES
227

reading, writing and keeping accounts. Then one day my mother said to me, "My son, your father before you was a merchant, and the time has come for you also to engage in trade. The richest merchant now living in our city is the money changer, Visakhila, and I hear that it is his habit to make loans to the poor sons of good families to start them in business. Go to him and ask him for such a loan."

Straightway I went to Visakhila, the money changer, and found him angrily denouncing another merchant's son, to whom he had loaned money: "See that dead Mouse upon the ground," he said scornfully, "a clever man could start with even such poor capital as that and make a fortune. But, however much money I loan you I barely get back the interest on it, and I greatly doubt whether you have not already lost the principal."

Hereupon I impetuously turned to Visakhila and said, "I will accept the dead Mouse as capital to start me in business!"

With these words, I picked up the Mouse, wrote out a receipt, and went my way, leaving the money changer convulsed with laughter.

I sold the Mouse to another merchant as cat's meat, for two handfuls of peas. I ground the peas and taking with me a pitcher of water, I hastened from the city and seated myself under the shade of a spreading tree. Many weary wood-cutters passed by, carrying their wood to market, and to each one I politely offered a drink of cool water and a portion of the peas. Every wood-cutter gratefully gave me in payment a couple of sticks of wood; and at the end of the day I took these sticks and sold them in the market. Then for a small part of the price I received for the wood I bought a new supply of peas; and so on the second day I obtained more sticks from the woodcutters. In the course of a few days I had amassed quite a little capital and was able to buy from the wood-cutters all the wood that