A Miser Man

A very stingy（吝啬的） man who had no pleasure but that of making money sold his all, namely, his place and fields, and forged all the money he received into a mass of gold, and buried it in the ground. Every day he visited the spot, which was one of his daily greatest pleasures.

 

Then a man who occasionally came to the neighborhood saw this miser¹ digging up the earth with joy. When this neighbor went there and dug the earth, he found a buried treasure, to his great astonishment². He resolved to run off with（偷走） it outright³. When the miser came to the spot the following day, he found his treasure missing, to his great amazement⁴. It furious agony（苦恼） and desperation, he cursed God and man tearing his hair like a mad man.

 

When a pedestrian（行人） asked his of his bitter sorrow, the miser told his story in great detail, but the passenger comforted and consoled him, saying, "You need not cry over your loss of treasure. I think your loss is not so great as you think. Bury in that place a stone of the same size in place of your mass of gold, and regard it as your lost one. You will hardly tell the difference the two, because, as far as you are concerned, gold is all one with a stone in point of utility." Happiness does not consist in owning money, but in reasonable using of it.

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