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
