Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk

In the state of Song there was a man who kept monkeys. He was very fond of monkeys and kept a large number of them. He could understand the monkeys and they could also understand him. He reduced the amount of food for his own family in order to satisfy the monkey's demands.
After a while his family did not have enough to eat, so he wanted to limit the food for the monkeys. But he was afraid that the monkeys would not submit to him.

Before doing that he first played a trick on them, "If I give you three chestnuts in the morning and four in the evening, would that be enough?" he asked the monkeys.

All the monkeys rose up in a fury. After a short time he said, "If I give you four chestnuts in the morning and three in the evening, would that be enough?" All the monkeys lay on the floor, very happy with this proposal.

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The wonderful pear-tree

Once upon a time a countryman came into the town on market-day, and brought a load of very special pears with him to sell. He set up his barrow in a good corner, and soon had a great crowd round him ; for everyone knew he always sold extra fine pears, though he did also ask an extra high price. Now, while he was crying up his fruit, a poor, old, ragged, hungry-looking priest stopped just in front of the barrow, and very humbly begged him to give him one of the pears. But the countryman, who was very mean and very nasty-tempered, wouldn't hear of giving him any, and as the priest didn't seem inclined to move on, he began calling him all the bad names he could think of. " Good sir," said the priest, " you have got hundreds of pears on your barrow. I only ask you for one. You would never even know you had lost one. Really, you needn't get angry." "Give him a pear that is going bad ; that will make him happy," said one of the crowd. "The o

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