It is not very wonderful that a thrifty man should acquire wealth by wealth; but I long ago achieved prosperity without any wealth to start with. My father died before I was born, and then my mother was deprived by wicked relations of all she possessed. Then she fled through fear of them, watching over the safety of her unborn child, and dwelt in the house of Kumáradatta a friend of my father's, and there the virtuous woman gave birth to me, who was destined to be the means of her future maintenance; and so she reared me up by performing menial drudgery. And as she was so poor, she persuaded a teacher by way of charity to give me some instruction in writing and ciphering. Then she said to me, "You are the son of a merchant, so you must now engage in trade, and there is a very rich merchant in this country called Visákhila; he is in the habit of lending capital to poor men of good family, go and entreat him to give you something to start with." Then I went to his house, and he at the very moment I entered, said in a rage to some merchant's son; "you see this dead mouse here upon the floor, even that is a commodity by which a capable man would acquire wealth, but I gave you, you good-for-nothing fellow, many dínárs, [81] and so far from increasing them, you have not even been able to preserve what you got." When I heard that, I suddenly said to that Visákhila, "I hereby take from you that mouse as capital advanced;" saying this I took the mouse up in my hand, and wrote him a receipt for it, which he put in his strong box, and off I went. The merchant for his part burst out laughing. Well, I sold that mouse to a certain merchant as cat's-meat for two handfuls of gram, then I ground up that gram, and taking a pitcher of water, I went and stood on the cross-road in a shady place, outside the city; there I offered with the utmost civility the water and gram to a band of wood-cutters; [82] every wood-cutter gave me as a token of gratitude two pieces of wood; and I took those pieces of wood and sold them in the market; then for a small part of the price which I got for them, I bought a second supply of gram, and in the same way on a second day I obtained wood from the wood-cutters. Doing this every day I gradually acquired capital, and I bought from those wood-cutters all their wood for three days. Then suddenly there befell a dearth of wood on account of heavy rains, and I sold that wood for many hundred panas, with that wealth I set up a shop, and engaging in traffic, I have become a very wealthy man by my own ability. Then I made a mouse of gold, and gave it to that Visákhila, then he gave me his daughter; and in consequence of my history I am known in the world by the name of Mouse. So without a coin in the world I acquired this prosperity. All the other merchants then, when they heard this story, were astonished. How can the mind help being amazed at pictures without walls? [83] Story of the chanter of the Sáma Veda.