The Clever Wife

A very long time ago there lived in a far corner of China, in Sinkiang, a good and simple man named Fu-hsing, who had an unusually clever wife. All the day long he would run to her with questions about thus-and-such, or about such-and-thus, as the case might fall out; and no matter how difficult the problem he took to her, she always thought of a solution. Thanks to her wondrous acumen, the house of Fu-hsing prospered mightily.

Fu-hsing was remarkably proud of his wife and often spoke of her as his "Incomparable Wisdom", his "Matchless Wit", or his "Dearest Capability." He only wished that all who passed his house could know it was her cleverness had brought him such great prosperity. For months he puzzled his head over a suitable way of declaring his gratitude, and at last conceived of a couplet that delicately conveyed his feeling. He inscribed the lines on twin scrolls and posted them on the gate before his house:

"A Matchless Wit like Fu-hsing's
Does with ease a million things."

All who passed the house saw the scrolls, and those who knew Fu-hsing thought what a scrupulous and honest husband he was to thus praise his wife. One day, however, the district magistrate happened to pass that way. On reading the scrolls, he drew his mouth down and his eyebrows together in a terrible frown.

"What a boastful, conceited fellow lives there!" he thought. "What appalling arrogance! Such windbaggery should not go unpunished!" When he returned to his quarters, he sent a clerk with a stern summons for Fu-hsing to appear before him forthwith.

The summons so frightened Fu-hsing that he could scarce speak enough words to tell his wife of it."…can't understand ... I'm law-abiding ... good citizen ... pay taxes and tariffs without cheating . . ." He pulled frantically at his hair, sprinkling strings of it on the floor. "My dear Capability, what can I have done to bring upon me this summons?"

His wife laid a calming hand on his before he could tear out the last of his sparse hair. "It must be," she said after a moment's thought, "that the scrolls on the gate have given offence. Really, it is not worth worrying about! Go with the clerk to see the magistrate and have no fear. If you run into difficulty, we can talk it over when you return."

Much relieved, Fu-hsing went off with the clerk and soon was standing before the magistrate, whose eyebrows by now had nudged so close together that they were quite entangled with each other. He sat glowering behind an immense table, his arms folded magisterially into his sleeves.

"So!" he exclaimed. "This is the braggart who posts scrolls on his gate to boast of his extraordinary cleverness!" He leant forward to glare into Fu-hsing's face, the terrible eyebrows bristling like angry hedgehogs. "You would have the world believe you can do anything at all, would you! No matter how difficult? Very well." Loosing his arms from his sleeves, he struck an angry fist on the table. "I have three small tasks for you to perform. At once! For a fellow of your prodigious talents, they should provide no difficulty. No difficulty whatsoever.

"First, then," and pound went the fist, "you shall weave a cloth as long as a road.

"Second," pound, pound, "you shall make as much wine as there is water in the ocean.

"Third," pound, pound, pound, "you shall raise a pig as big as a mountain."

With an awful smile, the magistrate uncurled his fist to waggle a long finger under poor Fu-hsing's nose. "Of course, if you do not accomplish these tasks for me one-two-three, you will soon learn how this court deals with swollen heads!"

Wretched and anxious, Fu-hsing hastened home to his wife and stammered out the three impossible demands made by the magistrate.

His wife threw back her head and laughed. "Foolish husband!" she said. "The hardest problems are those with the simplest answers!"

Fu-hsing continued to wring his hands. "But what shall I do? I know that you can accomplish anything, but this is beyond all reason..."

Madame Fu-hsing's smile stopped him. "It is really quite simple. Rest well tonight. Tomorrow you must go back to the magistrate and present to him three quite ordinary implements which I shall make ready for you. I will give you certain words to take along with these devices, and you must say them to the magistrate just as I tell them to you."

Fu-hsing attended well to his wife's instructions, and the next morning, carrying a ruler, a large measuring bowl and a balancing scale, he presented himself to the magistrate once again. When he started speaking, the eyebrows were as tightly knotted as before, but as Fu-hsing continued, and laid in turn the three measuring devices before the magistrate, the brows gradually lifted up and away from his eyes until they became flying birds of astonishment.

"This morning, as I was setting out to do the tasks you gave me," Fu-hsing began, "I realized that I needed further instruction from you before I could finish. Therefore, your Honour, I have taken the liberty of bringing these three measures to facilitate your task. I must respectfully ask you, first, to measure the road with this ruler that I may know the length of the cloth I must weave; second, measure the ocean's water with this bowl that I may know how much wine I must make; and third, weigh the mountain with this balance that I may know how big a pig I must raise."

Fu-hsing made a deferential bow. "Just as soon as you have set the standards, your Honour, I shall be pleased to finish the tasks." So confounded was the magistrate at the cunning solution to his three problems that he allowed Fu-hsing to go without punishment, and never ventured to bother him again. Truly, the magistrate believed Fu-hsing's Matchless Wit could do a million things.

A Short Story on Self Confidence

There was a business executive who was deep in debt and could see no way out.

Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy.

Suddenly an old man appeared before him. ”I can see that something is troubling you,” he said.

After listening to the executive’s woes, the old man said, “I believe I can help you.”

He asked the man his name, wrote out a check, and pushed it into his hand saying, “Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time.”

Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

The business executive saw in his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world!

“I can erase my money worries in an instant!” he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed check in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the strength to work out a way to save his business, he thought.

With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the uncashed check. At the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. But just as the executive was about to hand back the check and share his success story, a nurse came running up and grabbed the old man.

“I’m so glad I caught him!” she cried. “I hope he hasn’t been bothering you. He’s always escaping from the rest home and telling people he’s John D. Rockefeller.”

And she led the old man away by the arm.

The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he’d been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had half a million dollars behind him.

Suddenly, he realized that it wasn’t the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.

Shake It Off and Step Up

A parable is told of a farmer who owned an old mule. The mule fell into the farmer’s well. The farmer heard the mule ‘braying’ — or whatever mules do when they fall into wells. After carefully assessing the situation, the farmer felt sorry for the mule, but decided that neither the mule nor the well was worth saving. Instead, he called his neighbors together and told them what had happened and asked them to help haul dirt to bury the old mule in the well and put him out of his misery.

Initially, the old mule was hysterical! But as the farmer and his neighbors continued shoveling and the dirt hit his back, a thought struck him. It suddenly dawned on him that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back: he should shake it off and step up! This is what the old mule did, blow after blow. “Shake it off and step up… shake it off and step up… shake it off and step up!” he repeated to encourage himself.

No matter how painful the blows, or distressing the situation seemed, the old mule fought “panic” and just kept right on shaking it off and stepping up! You guessed it! It wasn’t long before the old mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of that well! What seemed like it would bury him, actually end up blessing him. All because of the manner in which he handled his adversity.

Paint the Town Green

There was a millionaire who was bothered by severe eye pain. He consulted so many physicians and was getting his treatment done. He did not stop consulting galaxy of medical experts; he consumed heavy loads of drugs and underwent hundreds of injections.

But the ache persisted with great vigour than before. At last a monk who has supposed to be an expert in treating such patients was called for by the millionaire. The monk understood his problem and said that for sometime he should concentrate only on green colours and not to fall his eyes on any other colours.

The millionaire got together a group of painters and purchased barrels of green color and directed that every object his eye was likely to fall to be painted in green colour just as the monk had directed.

When the monk came to visit him after few days, the millionaire's servants ran with buckets of green paints and poured on him since he was in red dress, lest their master not see any other colour and his eye ache would come back.

Hearing this monk laughed said "If only you had purchased a pair of green spectacles, worth just a few rupees, you could have saved these walls and trees and pots and all other articles and also could have saved a large share of his fortune. You cannot paint the world green."

The Chinese Bamboo Tree

You take a little bamboo seed, plant it, water it, and fertilize it for a while...and nothing happens.

In the second year, you water it, fertilize it...and nothing happens.

In the third year, you water it, fertilize it...and nothing happens.

How discouraging can it become.

In the fourth year, you water it, fertilize it...and still nothing happens. This is very frustrating.

In the fifth year, you continue to water and fertilize the seed.....and then sometimes during the fifth year, the Chinese bamboo tree begins to sprout.

In the Far East, there is a tree called the Chinese bamboo tree. This remarkable tree is different from most trees in that it doesn’t grow in the usual fashion. While most trees grow steadily over a period of years, the Chinese bamboo tree doesn’t break through the ground for the first four years. Then, in the fifth year, an amazing thing happens – the tree begins to grow at an astonishing rate. In fact, in a period of just five weeks, a Chinese bamboo tree can grow to a height of 90 feet. It’s almost as if you can actually see the tree growing before your very eyes.

Life often works in a similar way. You can work for weeks, months and even years on your dream with no visible signs of progress and then, all of the sudden, things take off.

Keep watering your bamboo tree !!!

Ana Fidelia Quirot – a real story

The Barcelona Olympic 800 metres bronze medalist suffered horrendous burns in 1993 while washing clothes in a kerosene driven washer. The kerosene spilled on to her body and then ignited. So badly burned and so close to death was she, that the doctors induced her labour in an attempt to at least save the baby she was carrying.

Her partner at the time was world record high jumper, Javier Sotomayor. Unfortunately, the baby did not survive.

Running for her life the small woman lay in the hospital in Havana. Terrible burns covered her body. She could not move and she could not see. She could hear a voice close to her bed. “If Ana lives,” the doctor said, “she will never run again.” But Ana Quirot, the famous international runner, could not accept these words.

After a month in intensive care Quirot herself beat the odds and slowly recovered.



She returned to running as just part of her mental and physical recovery. Her once beautiful body and face was now horribly scarred and it became a stark reminder to what she had overcome every time she stepped onto the track.

In 1995 one of the greatest comebacks in history was completed. Quirot won the 800 metres world title in Gothenburg. The tears that flooded down her face when she received the Olympic silver in Atlanta behind Russian Svetlana Masterkova, spoke volumes of the pain she had endured.

But she was not finished yet. Quirot defended her world title in 1997 in Athens defeating the great rival Maria Mutola.

"Sports made me start training again,” Quirot said. “It would have been impossible for me to come back without sports. If I had not run again, I believe I would have died, And when I started training again, that gave me life."

Tiger in the Toilet

Once a stranded tiger entered a washroom in a corporate office and hid in a dark corner. Since there were people outside the washroom through the day, the tiger was afraid to come out. Many people frequented the washroom, but the frightened tiger didn't touch anyone. However, after four days it couldn't bear hunger anymore, so it caught a man who had come in and ate him. This man happened to be an Assistant General manager in the organization, but nobody noticed his disappearance.

Since nothing untoward happened, the tiger became bold and after two days caught another man and tae him. This man was the General Manager of the organization. Still nobody worried over the disappearance.

Next day, the tiger caught the Vice President who was a terror in the organization. Again nothing happened. The tiger was very happy and decided that this was the perfect place for him to live.

The very next day the happy tiger caught a man who had entered the washroom while balancing a tray of teacups in one hand. The frightened man fell unconscious. Within fifteen minutes, a huge hue and cry ensued, and everyone in the office started looking for the man. he search team reached the washroom, flushed out the tiger and saved the unconscious man.

He was the tea supplier in the office.