A CHINESE PARABLE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2539, 24 February 1877, Page 4

A CHINESE PARABLE.

A lady has taken the trouble to translate from the Chinese the following parable, which points a moral that may teach a valuable lesson to the Occident as well as the Orient:— : Fohi, in the course of his wanderings, coming to a village, knocked at the door of a rich woman and begged permission to enter. "What!" said she, "do you think I receive into my house every roving vagabond ? No, indeed, it would be unbefitting a respectable woman; go your way!" Then he went to the cottage of a poor woman, who at once kindly begged him to enter. She set before him the only food she had, a little goat's milk, broke a piece of bread into it, and said, " May Fohi bless it that we may both have enough!" She then prepared for him a couch of straw ; and when he fell asleep, perceiving that he had no shirt, she sat up all night and made him one out of some linen she had made by her own hard labor ; in the morning she brought it to him, begging he would ■ not despise her poor gift. After breakfast, she accompanied him a little way; and at parting, Fohi said, " May the first work you undertake last until the evening! When she got home she began to measure her linen, to see how much was left; and she went on measuring, and did not come to tbe end of it, until the evening, when her house and yard were full of linen ; in short f-he did not know what to do with her wealth. Her rich neighbor, seeing this, was sorely vexed and resolved that such good fortune should not escape from her again. After some months, the traveller, came once more to the village; she went to meet him, pressed him to go to her house, treated him to the best food she had, and in.the morning brought him a shirt of fine linen, which she had made some time before ; but all night she kept a candle burning in her room that the stranger, if he awoke, might suppose she was making his shirt. After breakfast she accompanied him out of the village; and when they parted, he said " May the first work •you undertake last till evening ! " She went her way home, thinking the whole time ot her linen, and anticipating its wonderful increase; but just then her cows befian to low. " Before I measure my linen," said she, " I will quickly fetch the cows some water." But when she poured the water into the trough, her pail never emptied ; she went on pouring, the stream increased, and soon her house and yard were all under water ; the neighbors complained that everything was ruined ; the cattle were drowned, and with difficulty she saved her own life, for the water never ceased flowing until the setting of tbe sun.