Page:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories.djvu/119

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THE BOY WHO BECAME A HSAO-TSZE
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and cooked the fish for his mother. And in fifteen days she was well.

******** Soon after this, Wong-Ziang was given work in the next village as cook for a rich professor who had many pupils.

One day he went to the wilderness to cut wood. His mother knew that her boy worked hard, and so she went with him to help and they worked until sunset.

Suddenly a small tiger came out of the forest towards the mother, and from fear she became as one dead.

Wong-Ziang screamed and made a great noise. He threw his clothes at the beast and it ran away. Then he carried his mother home, and the neighbors who had watched him all his life said, "Wong-Ziang will become a Hsao-Tsze if he is always like this."

Wong-Ziang had seen twenty-one years when his mother died, and he had never left her for one day in all his life. He was liked by his teachers, schoolmates, and neighbors, for they said, "We can learn a great lesson from Wong-Ziang who has loved and honored his mother perfectly."

While his mother was living, Wong-Ziang worked for her and spent little time or money in study; but after she died, he studied hard. When his work in