Page 10 - Moral Stories Vol 1

In the days when the earth was young and all things were better than they are now, when men and women were stronger and of greater beauty and the fruit of the trees was larger and sweeter than that which we now eat, rice, the staple food of the people had a larger grain than it is today.
One grain was all that a man could eat. In those early days, such was the merit of the people that they never had to toil for gathering the rice because when full-grown, the rice fell from the stalks and rolled into the villages, even into the granaries. Now, one year the rice was larger and more plentiful; than ever before. A widow said to her daughter, “Our granaries are too small. We will pull them down and build larger ones”.
When the old granaries were pulled down and the new ones were not yet ready for use, the rice was fully grown in the fields. The widow and her daughter tried to finish the new granaries on time, but the rice came rolling in where the work was going on. Now, the widow got angry and struck a grain and cried, “Could you not wait in the fields until we were ready? You should not bother us now when you are not wanted”.
No sooner did she say this then the rice broke into thousands of pieces and said, “From now onwards we will wait in the fields until we are wanted”.
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